June 30, 2026 – Momenta, a firm specializing in autonomous driving technologies, launched its Hong Kong IPO filing process on June 29, with a planned main board listing scheduled for July 8 at an implied valuation of roughly US$9 billion.
Founded by Cao Xudong, the executive was born in Qingyang, Gansu Province, back in 1986. He secured admission to Tsinghua University’s School of Aerospace Engineering in 2004, majoring in Engineering Mechanics, and earned a direct PhD offer right after finishing his undergraduate studies.
During his first year as a doctoral student, Cao developed a strong fascination with computer vision and deep learning technologies. Despite his supervisor’s three attempts to persuade him to stay and complete his PhD program, he made the decision to drop out.
Starting in 2008, he joined the Computer Vision division of Microsoft Research Asia. Over his tenure there, he published more than a dozen papers for top-tier academic conferences including CVPR and ICCV, with his proprietary algorithms integrated into consumer products such as Xbox consoles and Bing search engine.
In 2015, Tang Xiao’ou recruited Cao to join SenseTime as Executive Director of Research & Development. One year later, in September 2016, Cao founded Momenta to focus on self-driving solutions.
The company has demonstrated robust and consistent commercial expansion according to its prospectus filings. Its annual revenue jumped from RMB 743 million in 2023 to RMB 2.413 billion in 2025, marking a surge of over 224% within just two years.
Major shifts have taken place across its revenue composition. Vehicle-based licensing service revenue has grown its share of total income from merely 3.1% up to 40.1%, which has pushed the group’s overall gross profit margin to an impressive 71.6%.
As of February 2026, Momenta has locked in design wins for 180 vehicle models, with 68 models already moving into mass production. The total number of its self-driving hardware kits installed on vehicles has surpassed 733,000 units. The firm also captures 64.5% of China’s third-party urban NOA market, taking the dominant position in this segment.
Its extensive client roster encompasses most leading automakers worldwide. Nine out of the world’s top ten vehicle manufacturers have established partnerships with Momenta, including Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and BYD, alongside all major domestic Chinese automotive brands.
The IPO has set an offer price of HK$295.6 per share, expected to raise nearly HK$5.9 billion in total proceeds. Around 60% of the raised capital will be allocated to research and development of physical AI innovations such as the R7 world model. A consortium of 14 institutional investors has signed on as cornerstone investors, collectively subscribing to almost half of the total offered shares. Existing automotive shareholders including Mercedes-Benz and BYD have further boosted their financial commitments in the offering.
