Racing For Hong Kong IPO Window: Momenta, QCraft, And Yuanrong Compete Head‑To‑Head

In October 2025, during the World Intelligent Connected Vehicle Conference, Momenta founder Cao Xudong asserted that competition in assisted driving would conclude in 2026, leaving only three domestic winners. Shortly thereafter, Momenta advanced into the final stage. On March 25, reports indicated Momenta had submitted listing documents to the Hong Kong Exchange. A week later, on April 2, 36Kr Auto reported that QCraft and Yuanrong Qixing had also quietly filed listing materials with the Hong Kong Exchange. All three leading autonomous driving solution providers have targeted listings within 2026.

This near‑simultaneous IPO push is outwardly a race to capture the Hong Kong listing window, but fundamentally it represents a contest for survival. Over the past two years, both capital sentiment and market supply‑demand dynamics in the intelligent driving sector have shifted materially. Primary‑market investors have grown more cautious while physical AI has emerged as a new competitive axis; concurrently, intelligent driving has been moving toward standardization in vehicles, clarifying the market structure and intensifying the urgency among players to secure a public listing. Tesla’s anticipated introduction of FSD into China has further unsettled the market, and under these combined pressures many observers view the second half of 2026 as a likely final window for Hong Kong IPOs in this segment.

The industry’s elimination phase has entered its endgame, and obtaining an IPO ticket will directly affect whether these three companies remain at the table. Listing is no longer a terminal objective but a multidimensional test. The three firms’ coordinated decision to pursue listings at this juncture is not coincidental. Under favorable conditions, the Hong Kong IPO process from confidential submission to listing typically spans six to nine months, implying Momenta, QCraft and Yuanrong Qixing are likely to list in the second half of 2026 and could trigger a new wave of intelligent‑driving IPOs in Hong Kong. The urgency driving this sprint stems from irreversible trends inside and outside the industry that have compressed the capitalization window for independent autonomous driving companies.

External competition is the primary challenge. With Tesla’s driver‑supervised FSD system approaching China commercialization, the competitive landscape is poised for structural change. Preparatory steps for FSD’s full China rollout accelerated early this year, and industry consensus increasingly expects comprehensive commercialization within 2026. If Tesla’s globally validated driving solution is localized successfully, original equipment manufacturers’ supplier choices will shift, forcing a reassessment of market space and valuation logic for independent solution providers. Capital market dynamics present a second challenge. According to IT Juzi, intelligent driving investment in 2025 totaled RMB 22.848 billion, roughly one‑third of 2024’s level. Although pockets of recovery exist, capital has become more selective, concentrating on L2 mass production and L4 specific‑scenario projects with clear paths to deployment, while early‑stage, scenario‑less, pure‑technology ventures remain largely unfunded. Traditional VC and PE participation has waned, with industrial capital and automakers now the dominant investors. For unprofitable autonomous driving firms, narrowing primary‑market financing channels mean cash‑flow lifelines are tightening, and the capital‑intensive, long‑cycle nature of large‑model development makes sustained funding essential for continued iteration and mass‑production delivery.

Faced with urgent funding needs, listing offers access to secondary‑market financing and can provide a more certain path to sustain R&D investment. Yet an IPO does not guarantee success. The simultaneous November 2025 Hong Kong listings of Pony.ai and WeRide, both of which opened below their issue prices, remain a cautionary example: secondary markets have cooled on pure technology narratives and Robotaxi visions. Consequently, Momenta, QCraft and Yuanrong Qixing confront not only time pressure but also valuation challenges. Current estimates place Momenta’s valuation above RMB 100 billion, QCraft’s between USD 1.5 billion and USD 2.0 billion, while Yuanrong Qixing has not publicly disclosed a valuation. A shared recognition has emerged that in the large‑model era, relying solely on selling driving solutions imposes a visible valuation ceiling. As AI increasingly bridges virtual and physical domains, the competitive dimensions have risen: the sector’s ultimate contest centers less on isolated technology and more on becoming the gateway for AI into the physical world.

By late March, large‑scale deployment of physical AI had become a central trend. Industry developments include SAIC Volkswagen’s March 16 unveiling of the ID. ERA 9X flagship SUV equipped with Momenta’s R7 reinforcement‑learning world model, marking a key step toward scaled physical‑AI integration. On March 23, following a new Series D financing round, QCraft’s CEO Yu Qian announced a strategic pivot toward L4 autonomous driving and generalized physical AI, supported by one million vehicles already fitted with QCraft’s assisted‑driving systems and by its VLA and world models. Yuanrong Qixing has positioned its VLA base model as an AI foundation for the physical world, seeking to unify scenario understanding, driving decision‑making and safety assessment within a single model architecture. Each company is effectively addressing the same fundamental question: how to increase intrinsic enterprise value.

This reality reframes the IPO race: it is not merely a capital‑raising exercise but a bid to validate value and secure the right to survive the next industry phase. The three firms have pursued divergent technical routes, customer strategies and commercialization rhythms despite converging on the same market window. Momenta, founded in 2016 by Cao Xudong, prioritized mass‑production L2 deployments to accumulate data for L4 development and formalized a “flywheel plus two‑leg” strategy that pairs mass‑production intelligent driving with full autonomy. QCraft shifted toward L2++ front‑mounted mass production and a dual‑engine strategy that advances both Robobus and production ADAS, emphasizing cost‑efficient, rapid adaptation to scale high‑level driving functions. Yuanrong Qixing maintained a technology‑first stance, anticipating a shift away from high‑precision map dependence and introducing a city NOA solution that operates without such maps, later advancing into the large‑model era with its VLA model.

By the end of 2025, Momenta had secured more than 160 model designations, exceeded 500,000 cumulative installations, and held over 60% third‑party market share in domestic city NOA, while also expanding into more than ten overseas markets. QCraft reported surpassing one million vehicles equipped with its assisted‑driving systems in January 2026. Yuanrong Qixing achieved near‑40% monthly market share in city NOA by late 2025, becoming the second‑largest supplier after Momenta.

In conclusion, after a decade of parallel competition, the three companies now pursuing Hong Kong IPOs have already followed distinct developmental paths and face unique commercialization imperatives. Momenta must convert its scale advantage into sustained revenue growth and improving gross margins; QCraft must translate its million‑unit scale into higher per‑vehicle profitability; Yuanrong Qixing must convert technical leadership into steady revenue expansion. These commercial outcomes will not be overlooked by capital markets. Ultimately, an IPO grants entry to the industry’s endgame, but victory will be determined not by who lists first but by which company most rapidly converts technical strengths into verifiable commercial performance on the secondary market.