Chinese self-driving trucking company pivots to generative AI for video games

cnbc.com:

Embattled Chinese autonomous trucking company TuSimple has rebranded to CreateAI, focusing on video games and animation, the company announced Thursday.

The news comes as GM folded its Cruise robotaxi business this month, and the once-hot sector of self-driving startups has started to weed out stragglers. TuSimple, which straddled the U.S. and China markets, had its own challenges: concerns over vehicle safety, a $189 million settlement of a securities fraud lawsuit and delisting from the Nasdaq in February.

Now, just over two years after CEO Cheng Lu rejoined the company in the role after being pushed out, he expects the business can break even in 2026.

That's thanks to a video game based on the hit martial arts novels by Jin Yong that's slated to release an initial version that year, Cheng said. He anticipates «several hundred million» in revenue in 2027 when the full version is launched.

Before the delisting, TuSimple said it lost $500,000 in the first three quarters of 2023, and spent $164.4 million on research and development during that time.

Company co-founder Mo Chen has a «long history» with the Jin Yong family and started work in 2021 to develop an animated feature based on the stories, Cheng said.

The company claims its artificial intelligence capabilities in developing autonomous driving software give it a base from which to develop generative AI. That's the next-level tech powering OpenAI's ChatGPT, which generates human-like responses to user prompts.

Along with the CreateAI rebrand, the company debuted its first major AI model called Ruyi, an open-source model for visual work, available via the Hugging Face platform.

«It's clear our shareholders see the value in this transformation and want to move forward