Workers set up the TuSimple booth for CES 2022 at the Las Vegas Convention Center on January 3, 2022.
Alex Wong | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Embattled Chinese autonomous transportation company TuSimple has renamed itself CreateAI and is focusing on video games and animation, the company announced Thursday.
The news comes as GM shut down its cruise robotaxi business this month and the once-hot sector of self-driving startups has begun weeding out laggards. TuSimple, which has spanned the U.S. and Chinese markets, has had its own challenges: vehicle safety concerns, a $189 million settlement in a securities fraud case and a delisting from Nasdaq in February.
Now, just over two years after CEO Cheng Lu rejoined the company after being ousted in that position, he expects the company to break even in 2026.
That's thanks to a video game based on Jin Yong's successful martial arts novels, which is scheduled to release a first version this year, Cheng said. He expects sales of “several hundred million” in 2027 when the full version comes onto the market.
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.
The company's co-founder Mo Chen has a “long history” with the Jin Yong family and began working on developing an animated film based on the stories in 2021, Cheng said.
The company claims that its artificial intelligence capabilities in developing autonomous driving software provide it with a foundation for developing generative AI. This is the next-level technology that powers OpenAI's ChatGPT, generating human-like responses to user input.
Along with the rebranding of CreateAI, the company introduced its first large-scale AI model called Ruyi, an open-source model for visual work available through the Hugging Face platform.
“It is clear that our shareholders recognize the value of this transformation and want to move forward in this direction,” Cheng said. “Our management team and board have received overwhelming support from shareholders.” The company said its annual general meeting would be held on Friday. He said the company plans to increase its workforce from 300 to around 500 next year.
Co-founder Xiaodi Hou, who says he is the company's largest individual shareholder with 29.7%, has publicly questioned the shift to gaming and animation. Hou said he would withhold or decline support at the shareholders meeting and called for the company to be liquidated. Since then, Hou has founded his own Houston-based autonomous transportation company, Bot Auto, which said it received $20 million in funding in September.
Reduce production costs by 70%
Still under the name TuSimple, the company announced a partnership with Shanghai Three Body Animation in August to develop the first animated feature film and video game based on the science fiction novel series “The Three-Body Problem.”
The company announced at the time that it would launch a new business to develop generative AI applications for video games and animation.
Cheng said CreateAI will reduce the cost of producing premium, so-called triple-A games by 70% over the next five to six years. He declined to say whether the company is in talks with the gaming giant Tencent.
Asked about the impact of the U.S. restrictions, Cheng said there were no issues and said the company uses a mix of Chinese and non-Chinese cloud computing providers.
The US has tightened restrictions on Chinese companies' access to advanced semiconductors for generative AI under the Biden administration.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that CreateAI, formerly TuSimple, will hold its annual meeting on Friday.