Troubled self-driving truck firm TuSimple rebrands as CreateAI, launches AI model

Once a rising star in autonomous driving, TuSimple has announced a rebranding as it pursues AI-generated video content after ousting its CEO

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TuSimple has rebranded as CreateAI as it looks to generative AI services to turn a profit by 2026. Photo: Handout

Published: 1:30pm, 19 Dec 2024

Troubled autonomous truck company TuSimple Holdings has rebranded itself CreateAI, as it walks away from costly self-driving technology development and pivots to video games and films amid persistent disputes among the co-founders.

Once a rising star among autonomous driving start-ups, the firm announced the rebranding on Thursday with the debut of an open-sourced video-generation artificial intelligence (AI) model called Ruyi. But the move into AI comes amid strong opposition from the company’s co-founder and former CEO Hou Xiaodi, who was sacked by the board in 2022 over alleged improper dealings and possible tech transfers to a Chinese firm founded by TuSimple co-founder Chen Mo.

Hou filed a lawsuit demanding the immediate liquidation of TuSimple, now CreateAI, alleging the company abused shareholder money. Hou said his previous 29.7 per cent voting power should be returned from Chen, which would enable him to veto the plan at CreateAI’s shareholder meeting this Friday. Chen refused to relinquish control. A ruling is scheduled for the first quarter of 2025.

CreateAI CEO Lu Cheng said the company has faced problems from geopolitics, but sees content creation as a less contentious. Photo: Handout

CreateAI CEO Lu Cheng said in an interview with the Post that autonomous driving, which is “very costly”, would not be profitable in the near term, while AI-generated content is expected to bring the company “some real revenue in 2025 and [enable it to] turn profitable in 2026”.

Still, CreateAI is “not giving up on autonomous driving”, Lu said. Instead of actively operating a large fleet or hauling freight, the company is “actively working to find partners to license [its] technology” as a “supplier”.

The company announced in August its plan to expand into generative AI, the technology popularised by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Sora. It has since unveiled plans to produce an animated film and a video game based on China’s first Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem. It is also planning a AAA open-world multiplayer online role-playing game Heroes of Jin Yong, based on the wuxia works of legendary Hong Kong writer Louis Cha Leung-yung.

Lu said the first previews of its Three-Body Problem feature should be public by the middle of next year, and an initial version of the Heroes of Jin Yong game will be out in 2026, with the full version to be launched by 2027.