Chinese self-driving truck company TuSimple relies on genAI for games

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 discontinued its Cruise Robotaxi business this monthand the once-hot self-driving startup sector has begun weeding out laggards. TuSimple, which spanned the US and China markets, had its own challenges: Vehicle safety concernsA Settlement for $189 million a securities fraud lawsuit and Delisted 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 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.

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 received overwhelming support from shareholders at the annual meeting.”

He said the company plans to increase its workforce from 300 to around 500 next year.

Still under the name TuSimple, the company announced a partnership with Shanghai Three Body Animation in August Development of 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.

CreateAI expects to reduce the costs of so-called top-tier products Triple-A game production by 70% over the next five to six years, Cheng said. 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.