Chinese self-driving truck company TuSimple chooses genAI for games

Controversial Chinese autonomous transportation company TuSimple has been renamed CreateAI and will focus on video games and animation, the company announced on Thursday.

The news comes as GM this month shuttered its Cruise robotaxi business and the once-hot sector of self-driving startups has begun weeding out stragglers. Straddling the US and Chinese markets, TuSimple had its own challenges: concerns about vehicle safetyA $189 Million Settlement of a securities fraud lawsuit and delisting from Nasdaq in February.

Now, just over two years after CEO Cheng Lu rejoined the company after being kicked out, he expects the company to break even in 2026.

That’s thanks to a video game based on Jin Yong’s popular martial arts novels, which is expected to release a first draft that year, Cheng said. He expects “several hundred million” in revenue by 2027 when the full version launches.

Before the delisting, TuSimple said so lost $500,000 in the first three quarters of 2023and spent $164.4 million on research and development during that time.

Company 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 give it a foundation from which to develop generative AI. That’s the next-level technology powering OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which generates human-like responses to user prompts.

Along with the CreateAI rebrand, the company debuted its first major AI model called Ruyi, an open-source model for visual work available through the Hugging Face platform.

“It is clear that our shareholders see the value of this transformation and want to continue in this direction,” said Cheng. “Our management team and Board of Directors have received overwhelming support from shareholders.” The company said it will hold its annual shareholder meeting on Friday.

He said the company plans to increase its workforce to about 500 next year, up from 300.

While still under the name TuSimple, the company announced a partnership with Shanghai Three Body Animation in August developing the first animated film and video game based on the science fiction novel series ‘The Three-Body Problem’.

The company said at the time that it was launching a new business segment to develop generative AI applications for video games and animation.

CreateAI expects to reduce the cost of producing so-called triple A games by 70% over the next five to six years, Cheng said. He declined to say whether the company was in talks with the gaming giant Tencent.

When asked about the impact of the US restrictions, Cheng claimed there were no issues and said the company used a mix of Chinese and non-Chinese cloud computing providers.

The US under the Biden administration has increased restrictions on Chinese companies’ access to advanced semiconductors used to power generative AI.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that CreateAI, formerly TuSimple, will hold its annual shareholder meeting on Friday.