By Danielle Popov
Copyright scmp
Alibaba Group Holding has jumped into the burgeoning robotaxi market – which is a promising and profitable area for artificial intelligence applications – by investing in Hello, a ride-hailing business backed by its fintech affiliate Ant Group.
Hello said on Wednesday that it had received “a strategic investment” from Alibaba to cooperate in areas such as algorithm platforms and smart driving large language models with the goal of achieving “commercialisation” and “scaled operations” of robotaxi fleets. Hello did not disclose the amount of the investment. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
The investment comes as Chinese and US tech giants are competing to make driverless taxis a commercial reality. Tesla is expanding trials of its robotaxi services in Texas and California to compete against Waymo, a self-driving taxi service backed by Google parent Alphabet.
Chinese search engine Baidu’s robotaxi unit, Apollo Go, said it had completed more than 11 million rides covering 200 million kilometres globally as of August. Meanwhile, Chinese autonomous driving tech firms Pony.ai and WeRide are aggressively expanding their robotaxi services in Asia and Europe.
Alibaba’s investment into Hello followed the start-ups roll-out of its own robotaxi model, the Hello Robot1 vehicle, intensifying competition with its domestic rivals.
As part of the investment deal, the partners will also develop vision, voice and large language AI models, as well as special models for vertical applications and “intelligent” cockpits.
Alibaba Cloud, the AI and cloud services unit of Alibaba, would be responsible for the technical research and development, as well as algorithm iteration, optimising user experience and improving operational efficiency.
In April, Hello launched a robotaxi business in partnership with its main shareholder Ant and Contemporary Amperex Technology, the world’s largest electric vehicle battery maker, with an initial investment of 3 billion yuan (US$422 million).
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu Yongming said the deal combined the Hangzhou-based company’s advantages in AI and cloud computing with Hello’s experience in ride-hailing to roll out autonomous driving services.
Separately, Alibaba in August said it planned to spin off its Banma Network Technology unit through an initial public offering (IPO). Its stake in Banma, which develops autonomous driving software, would drop to 30 per cent from the current 44.72 per cent after the IPO.
Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares gained 5.28 per cent on Wednesday.
