Fremont self-driving tech unicorn scores $462M, mostly from one Japanese car giant

Toyota Motor Corp. is pumping $400 million into Pony.ai, a Chinese startup led by former Baidu and Google self-driving car executives whose U.S. headquarters is in Fremont. The company said the new funding is part of a $462 million round that values it at just over $3 billion. The rest of the funding came from existing investors who include Sequoia Capital China and IDG Capital. “It will enable us to make the commercialization of autonomous-driving vehicles faster,” Pony.ai CEO James Peng…