Tencent has formed an alliance with prominent industry players to explore the development of artificial intelligence (AI) that is used in autonomous driving in China, to keep up with rivals Baidu and Alibaba’s work in the self-driving industry.
The alliance includes the likes of Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun, famously known as ‘the father of Google’s self-driving car’, Li Bin, founder and chairman of Chinese electric carmaker Nio and Stefan Greiner, director of Audi China’s autonomous driving and chassis development. According to Tencent, aims to support the research for self-driving and manufacture related products in future.
“Tencent hopes to make an all-out effort to reinforce the development of AI technologies used in autonomous driving,” said Chen Juhong, vice president of Tencent Holdings.
“We want to be a ‘connector’ to help accelerate cooperation, innovation and industry convergence, contributing our humble efforts to the growth of the whole industry.”
Search engine giant Baidu formed the Project Apollo platform in July with more than 50 partners including Ford and Daimler, while Alibaba partnered SAIC Motor to develop internet-connected cars.
