Top Connected Cars Startups in 2026

Pony.ai is a start-up that aims to create the best AI solutions for autonomous driving. We are developing Level 4 fully autonomous driving vehicles that will revolutionize the transportation system. We are convinced that these vehicles must be safe, reliable and cost effective. In addition, our AI technology enables our vehicles to be intelligent, such that they can comfortably handle complicated city driving conditions involving other vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians. At Pony.ai, we believe that a practical engineering approach is the most feasible path to bring the first generation of self-driving vehicles to market.

Drivemode is focused on making technology safer and easier to use in the car, starting with the smartphone. The Drivemode app transforms your phone into a car’s central computing device. Our “no look” interface allows you to focus on the road ahead, not your phone, while accessing music, navigation, calls, texts and more. The beauty of Drivemode is that it works in any car, eliminating the need for a pricey upgrade, and it is free.

Viaduct’s cloud platform derives actionable insights from connected vehicle data to power applications, such as predictive maintenance, driver identification, and driver safety scores. Deployed in the vehicle, Viaduct’s machine learning solutions intelligently compress and enhance vehicle data to allow the richest data to be transmitted to the cloud in the fewest bytes.