Pony.ai has begun using a new autonomous driving domain controller – a high-performance compute system designed for Pony.ai’s L4 autonomous driving platform and also a broader set of customer applications across autonomous mobility. Developed in collaboration with Nvidia, the new controller is built on the Nvidia Drive Hyperion platform and powered by Nvidia Drive AGX Thor with Nvidia NVLink, supporting Pony.ai’s next phase of commercialization in robotaxis and its growing domain controller business.
The new system is designed to deliver significant gains in AI computing performance, energy efficiency and support for the latest AI models, while meeting core L4 requirements such as multisensor fusion, full-scenario perception and high-complexity scenario understanding. It is also engineered to enhance safety redundancy, system robustness and deployment flexibility.
Pony.ai expects the new platform to support a portfolio spanning multiple compute tiers and cooling solutions, enabling deployment across a wide range of autonomous applications. With flexible single-chip and multichip configurations, the platform is expected to incorporate Nvidia NVLink to enable high-speed, low-latency communication between the two Drive Thor systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), achieving a combined maximum computing performance of 4000 FP4 TFLOPS.
The new platform builds on a long-standing collaboration between Pony.ai and Nvidia that began in 2017. In 2022, Pony.ai launched its in-house-developed automotive-grade computing unit powered by single or multiple Nvidia Drive AGX Orin SoCs, which was deployed in its sixth-generation robotaxis. In 2025, the company began mass production of the world’s first L4 robotaxi domain controller equipped with four Nvidia Drive AGX Orin SoCs. That controller now powers Pony.ai’s seventh-generation (Gen-7) robotaxis and provides a strong foundation for scalable, fully driverless operations.
Over the past year, Pony.ai has seen growing demand for its automotive-grade domain controllers across low-speed delivery, robosweeping, logistics, mining, autonomous shuttles and other robotics and intelligent mobility applications. Shipments of its Fangzai domain controller in 2025 surged by more than 500% year-on-year. Customers are spread across dozens of countries, including Germany, the UK, South Korea, Japan and Switzerland.
“Our collaboration with Nvidia has supported several critical milestones in Pony.ai’s autonomous driving journey,” said Dr James Peng, the founder and CEO of Pony.ai. “The next-generation domain controller built on Nvidia Drive Hyperion will be a key enabler for the continued evolution of our L4 autonomous driving products and help accelerate large-scale commercialization.”
“Autonomous driving systems are rapidly increasing in complexity, driving the need for scalable, high-performance compute platforms,” said Rishi Dhall, VP of automotive at Nvidia. “Pony.ai has been a long-standing Nvidia Drive customer and ecosystem partner, and we’re pleased to see them build their next-generation domain controller on Nvidia Drive Hyperion with Drive Thor accelerated compute to support advanced L4 autonomous driving applications.”
You can read an exclusive interview with Pony.ai’s founder and CTO, Tiancheng Lou, following the company’s recent launch of PonyWorld 2.0, the latest upgrade to its proprietary world model and a major advance in the core training system behind its autonomous driving stack.