Chinese self-driving startup WeRide files for U.S. initial public offering

Autonomous driving startup WeRide for an initial public offering in the U.S.

The Chinese self-driving company said it plans to list it shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker “WRD,” according to a F-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. The company didn’t disclose how many shares it would sell or provide an expected price range.

WeRide disclosed in the filing that it had a loss of $268 million on revenue of $55 million last year.

The WeRide IPO could be the largest IPO for a Chinese company in the U.S. since ride-sharing company DiDi Global’s $4.4 billion IPO in 2021, according to Bloomberg. The news service reported last year that WeRide filed confidentiality to raise as much as $500 million in an IPO.

WeRide, which makes robobuses, robotaxis and robosweepers and related sensor suites, was valued at about $4.4 billion in a March 2022 fundraising round.

Current investor Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance has agreed to buy shares in the IPO in a private placement, WeRide said in the filing.

WeRide competes with Tesla, Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Waymo, General Motors’ (GM) Cruise LLC, Pony.ai and others in the self-driving technology space.

The WeRide IPO is being led by Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and China International Capital Corp.