29-05-2025
TuSimple Reportedly Shared Self-Driving Data With China
TuSimple—now known as CreateAI—shared sensitive data with a Beijing-owned company after it signed an agreement with the U.S. government promising to stop sharing such data with firms in China, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
In February 2022, TuSimple signed the agreement, targeted at protecting national security. It had six months to begin complying with the order, which stipulated the company would disentangle its business and its burgeoning technology from The Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) was responsible for ensuring TuSimple's compliance with the agreement.
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WSJ reported TuSimple sent data to Chinese autonomous vehicles a week after the agreement was signed by both entities.
According to WSJ, the interagency body found that TuSimple's data sharing didn't violate that agreement; nonetheless, it did find other contraventions, which saw TuSimple paying a $6 million settlement fee, albeit without accepting fault for the issues CFIUS reportedly found.
The Journal further noted that TuSimple in 2021—prior to the CFIUS agreement—brokered a deal between Chinese companies Foton and Hydron that would see the two developing autonomous trucks together, while Hydron shared an office with TuSimple.
The publication further noted that TuSimple subsequently shared documents detailing how to build the autonomous vehicles it had built in the U.S.—including information about brakes, chips, steering, servers and powering the vehicle and noted that the sharing continued after the CFIUS agreement had been signed, until the compliance period officially began. WSJ reported that one of TuSimple's founders denied having sent any such information to Hydron and denied any involvement with Foton, despite the Journal having seen evidence to the contrary.
TuSimple's tango with CFIUS was far from its only regulatory ruckus during this time; the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also investigated TuSimple in 2022, with a special interest in the relationship between the company and Hydron. Public documentation shows that TuSimple indicated it had come to a settlement agreement with the SEC that just needed to be finalized, but the CFIUS investigation—and another investigation brought against TuSimple by the Commerce Department because of its purported relationship with technology giant Nvidia.
But TuSimple, in the form that it was then, is long gone. In January 2024, the company announced that it would delist from the Nasdaq, citing cost-value imbalances. That move came after layoffs and issues with venture capital funding, which later saw TuSimple auctioning off 10 of its autonomous big rigs.
In its place is CreateAI, which leverages generative AI to create video content. That venture, stood up in December 2024, comes after TuSimple vacated the U.S. market; the company told TechCrunch that despite its efforts to operate an autonomous vehicle business in China, its agreement with CFIUS made such an attempt extremely difficult. CreateAI is funded by some of the money left in TuSimple's wake
But CreateAI isn't the only venture that TuSimple alumni are involved with; according to WSJ, Xiaodi Hou, one of the company's founders, has started a new company based out of Texas called Bot Auto. He has recruited ex-TuSimple employees.
Sourcing Journal could not reach CreateAI, formerly TuSimple, for comment.
