US-based autonomous truck developer TuSimple filed for an initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Select Market yesterday that will give several corporate investors the chance to exit.
The company has set a $100m placeholder target for the offering, which will almost certainly be significantly larger in size. Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Global Markets and JP Morgan Securities have been appointed underwriters.
Founded in China, TuSimple is working on fully autonomous trucks to be used in logistics operations, and has secured reservations for 5,700 trucks upon their release. It is pre-revenue and made a $178m net loss in 2020, more than double its $84.9m loss the previous year.
The company has partnership deals in place with two of its investors, commercial vehicle producer Traton and Navistar, the diesel vehicle manufacturer Traton is in the process of buying. The IPO comes after roughly $648m of funding.
TuSimple had raised $7.5m in earlier funding when internet company Sina led a 2017 series B round sized above $20m, investing with Nvidia GPU Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of graphics processing technology producer Nvidia.
VC firms Fuhe Capital and Zhiping Capital supplied $55m in series C funding later the same year, before TuSimple closed a $215m series D round in September 2019 with a $120m investment by automotive component producer Mando.
UPS Ventures, the strategic investment arm of logistics services provider UPS, also participated in the series D round, along with Sina, alternative asset manager CDH Investments and investment firm Composite Capital Management.
Mobility investment firm VectoIQ led a $350m round for TuSimple in December 2020, investing with Traton, Navistar, tire manufacturer Goodyear, rail operators Union Pacific and CN, logistics firm US Xpress and supermarket chain Kroger.
TuSimple co-founders Mo Chen and Xiaodi Hou each own 50% of the company’s 24 million class B shares. The rest of its shareholders own part of almost 158 million class A shares, the same class that will be issued in the IPO.
Sina president and CEO Charles Chao owns 20% of the company’s class A shares according to the filing, while Mo Chen holds 9.1%, Xiaodi Hou 8.5%, Composite Capital Management 7.3% and Navistar 6.5%.
