The self-driving company TuSimple Inc. unveiled paperwork for its IPO on Tuesday, showing that it has lost more than $ 300 million over the past three years in the race to be the first to launch fully autonomous long-haul trucks.
TuSimple had already confidentially filed for an IPO, The Wall Street Journal reported, and Tuesday’s filing offered the public the first detailed look at a start-up that has attracted more money than many of its Silicon Valley counterparts and split operations in California and China has maintained.
The Chinese connections have caught the attention of US regulators. The US Foreign Investment Commission, or Cfius, has identified TuSimple as a company to be judged because of its ties to China and because autonomous driving technology is considered a critical technology for the Department of Defense. Cfius warned TuSimple this month that it was polling a Chinese investment in the company from 2017, according to the IPO filing.
Founded in 2015, TuSimple employs approximately 800 employees and raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors. The company posted sales of $ 1.8 million and a net loss of $ 177.9 million last year, according to the filing, which shows that it is still in the early stages of commercial technology development.
TuSimple has made money so far as a traditional freight forwarder, not selling its self-driving technology ready in 2024. It has customer reservations for more than 5,700 trucks, although not equal to sales revenues.