Momenta Receives Approval for U.S. IPO Listing: Collaborates with Half of the World’s Top 10 Automakers for Mass Production

Source: IPO Zaozhidao; Author: Stone Jin

According to IPO Zaozhidao, on 17 June 2024, the Department of International Cooperation of the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued a Notice of Overseas Issuance and Listing Filing of Momenta Global Limited (梦腾智驾环球有限公司), a portfolio company of Blue Lake Capital.

In other words, Momenta has been approved for an IPO in the US – according to the filing notice, Momenta plans to issue no more than 63,352,856 ordinary shares for listing on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange or the New York Stock Exchange in the US.

Established in 2016, Momenta has developed a data-driven “flywheel” technology platform that powers its dual-pronged product strategy – for production-ready autonomous driving and MSD for fully self-driving capabilities, which provides autonomous driving solutions at varying levels of automation. This enables the efficient and accelerated scalable deployment of self-driving capabilities, empowering the realization of a smarter, safer and more convenient transportation future.

Specifically, MSD (Momenta Self-Driving) is a fully autonomous driving solution designed for L4 and above applications, suitable for use cases such as taxis and private cars; while Mpilot is a highly automated driving solution, positioned as a production-ready, fully-integrated autonomous driving stack for factory-installed applications in private cars. Core products include Mpilot X and other end-to-end, continuous highly automated driving solutions covering a wide range of scenarios, such as highways/urban expressways, parking, and urban areas.

Momenta CEO Cao Xudong recently outlined the company’s dual-pronged strategic approach – a “flywheel” coupled with a two-pronged execution plan. One flywheel refers to the data-driven AI flywheel. One prong is mass-production-ready L2 level intelligent driving solution, scaling deployments to hundreds of thousands, even millions of vehicles in collaboration with leading automakers. This will generate massive data streams to train autonomous driving algorithms and tackle long-tail challenges in reaching L4 full self-driving. The other prong is their L4 full autonomy solution, continuously providing a technology pipeline to rapidly advance the capabilities of their mass-produced intelligent driving products.

In Cao Xudong’s view, this mutually reinforcing two-pronged approach allows the data from their production-ready L2 vehicles to train the algorithms for their L4 autonomy solution, while the L4 capabilities in turn elevate the technology ceiling and progression of the L2 offering. By seamlessly integrating the technology stacks and data pipelines between their production intelligent driving (Mpilot) and full autonomous driving (MSD) solutions, Momenta aims to ultimately achieve scale in true self-driving capabilities.

Blue Lake Capital was an early investor in Momenta since its establishment in 2016 and led its angel round funding. Since its inception, Momenta has received investments from well-known institutions and automakers such as Blue Lake Capital, ZhenFund, Sinovation Ventures, Shunwei Capital, NIO Capital, Daimler, JIYUAN CAPITAL, Cathay Capital, Tencent, China Merchants Innovation Investment (招商局创投), Oriza Capital, CCB International, Temasek, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, SAIC, YF Capital, Mercedes-Benz Group China, General Motors and Toyota Motor, among others.

Notably, major automakers including SAIC, General Motors, Toyota Motor are not only investors in Momenta, but also its crucial customers. Meanwhile, Momenta’s collaboration with Mercedes-Benz is poised to come to fruition as early as next year.

As Cao Xudong revealed, Momenta has established production partnerships with half of the world’s top ten automotive groups, with business operations spanning China as well as international markets in Germany, Japan, and the United States, etc.