This independent trucking company owned by China has shifted its previous focus on autonomous vehicle technology to video games and animation, now renamed as CreateAI.
The rebranding arrives when the autonomous vehicle business faces its own challenges, safety concerns, a settlement over securities fraud, and delisting from Nasdaq.
According to Cheng Lu, CEO, the firm will probably break even by 2026 through a major video game project based on martial arts novels by Jin Yong.
Key Background:
The company announced on December 19 that Chinese autonomous trucking company TuSimple has rebranded to CreateAI, a strategic pivot from self-driving technology to the realm of video games and animation. The change comes in response to the company’s experiences in the autonomous vehicle industry, including safety concerns, a securities fraud settlement, and delisting from the Nasdaq earlier this year.
The chief executive, Cheng Lu, who rejoined the company in 2022, is optimistic and says that CreateAI would break even by 2026. He hopes to reduce the production cost for video games, he believes he would be able to reduce the cost of producing triple A games by a massive 70% in five or six years from now. The largest project for CreateAI is the video game of Jin Yong’s martial arts novels. The company will be ready with the initial version by 2026 and would have made hundreds of millions by then, while the full version is expected to hit markets in 2027.
Despite the company’s shift in focus, it maintains that its expertise in artificial intelligence, developed through its autonomous driving software, serves as a foundation for its new endeavors in generative AI, a technology behind tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. CreateAI has debuted its first AI model, Ruyi, a visual work model available on the Hugging Face platform.
However, the transformation has not been without controversy. Co-founder Xiaodi Hou, who holds a 29.7% stake in the company, has publicly opposed the pivot, even calling for the company’s liquidation. He has since founded his own autonomous trucking company, Bot Auto, which secured $20 million in funding in September.
This expansion for CreateAI into gaming and animation happens at a time when the self-driving industry is facing more and more pressure. The recent dismantling of General Motors’ Cruise robotaxi business has thrown up quite a few challenges in this industry. However, still, CreateAI has reason to be optimistic about its future as it has plans to increase its workforce and exploit growing demand in creative industries for generative AI technology.
