Turing, a Tokyo autonomous-driving software startup founded in 2021, plans to open a US office within the next year and is targeting a potential American stock listing within five years at a valuation of roughly $10 billion, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal and Quartz.
Software, not steel
Instead of building cars or robotaxis, Turing is developing the end-to-end autonomous-driving software that powers them, with existing partnerships with Japanese carmaker Subaru and auto-parts supplier Denso — both of which sell into US markets, and both of which sit on Turing's cap table via Denso. CEO Issei Yamamoto told the WSJ that the U.S. office will initially concentrate on data collection and R&D, and that "the U.S. is our next major target market after Japan."
Second-mover advantage
Yamamoto pegged Turing as roughly three years behind Tesla on autonomous-driving capability and less than a year behind British startup Wayve, framing the gap as a "second-mover advantage" that lets his team pick and choose from published research and hardware roadmaps. Turing currently relies on Nvidia GPUs for full-scale training runs but has begun testing AMD accelerators to cut costs and hedge its supply chain, with AMD Ventures among its investors.
Timing an IPO into a crowded market
Turing expects to break even around 2030 or 2031, aiming for mass production of driver-assistance software in Japan and the US by 2030 and higher-level autonomous stacks for Japanese robotaxis on a similar timeline. An eventual US listing would put the startup up against listed AV leaders and richly funded private challengers, at a moment when Uber and Pony.ai are rolling 2,000 robotaxis across Europe, Waymo has opened Dallas to everyone and Zoox is aiming for 100 robotaxis a week from Hayward.
Reporting based on coverage from The Wall Street Journal, Quartz and Bloomberg.