Just now, the "first public stock of Physics AI" has debuted.

Undoubtedly, this is another phenomenal IPO.

Today (July 8), physics AI company Momenta officially debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. On its first trading day, the opening price stood at HK$301 per share, and as of press time, the company's market capitalization reached HK$71.745 billion (approximately RMB 62.158 billion).

During the prospectus phase, the market demonstrated extreme enthusiasm for this "first physics AI stock". For this IPO, Momenta introduced a total of 14 cornerstone investors, collectively subscribing to approximately US$376 million worth of shares. The investor lineup is exceptionally star-studded: Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC), Fidelity International, BlackRock, Mercedes-Benz Group, Oaktree Capital, BYD, Franklin Templeton, Boyu Capital, GaoYi Asset, China Pacific Insurance, GF Fund Management, China Asset Management (Hong Kong), Suzhou Mosu (state-owned), and GigaDevice — sovereign wealth funds, insurance capital, top-tier financial investors, and industry giants are all represented.

Looking back before the listing, Momenta had long been a standout favorite in the primary market. Over its 10-year history, the company has completed more than 20 financing rounds, raising a cumulative total of over US$2.5 billion, with a shareholder list that can be described as an "all-star" lineup.

According to the prospectus, the cost per share for the company's final financing round before the IPO was US$25.28, with a post-money valuation of US$6.185 billion (approximately RMB 41.9 billion). Based on this calculation, all early-stage investors have already recorded paper profits, and Series A investors have achieved returns exceeding 80 times.

There is no doubt that this IPO marks a beautiful milestone conclusion to a long capital journey.

Tsinghua PhD Dropout Founded the Company and Secured the "First Physics AI Stock" Title

The story of Momenta begins with its founder Cao Xudong.

Cao Xudong is a classic "top student". In 2004, he was admitted to Tsinghua University from Qingyang, Gansu Province, majoring in Engineering Mechanics, and was granted direct PhD admission after completing his undergraduate studies. However, during his first year of PhD studies, he discovered his passion for artificial intelligence and resolutely chose to drop out to join the Computer Vision Group at Microsoft Research.

This decision was somewhat unconventional at the time. Wang Xiao, founder of Ninebot Capital and an early investor in Momenta, recalled: "Back then, dropping out of a PhD program was a very rare occurrence, and AI was not a popular major either. His willingness to follow his heart not only shows his genuine passion for AI and bold determination, but also reflects his intuitive foresight into future trends."

During his tenure at Microsoft Research Asia, Cao Xudong published more than 10 papers at top conferences such as CVPR and ICCV, and the algorithms he developed were applied to Microsoft products including Xbox, Bing, and How-Old. In 2015, he joined SenseTime, one of the "AI Four Dragons", as Executive R&D Director, completing the transition from academic research to industrial practice. Over the following two years, Cao led his team to achieve mass production and implementation of multiple computer vision algorithms. It was during this period that he increasingly realized that the window of opportunity for autonomous driving was right around the corner. Thus, in 2016, together with Xia Yan, Sun Gang, and Sun Huan, he co-founded Momenta in Zhongguancun, Beijing.

From the very beginning of its establishment, Momenta established the strategy of "one flywheel, two paths". In simple terms, it means accumulating real road condition data by providing L2+ level assisted driving solutions for mass-produced vehicles, feeding this data back to optimize algorithms, and then supporting the deployment of scalable autonomous driving services such as L4 level Robotaxi, thereby forming a "flywheel effect".

It is worth noting that this direction was not a popular choice at the time. Back then, the industry was frantically betting on L4, with everyone showcasing demos and testing experimental vehicles. Developing L2 solutions was far less "sexy" than pursuing L4. But in hindsight, it was this less glamorous path that Momenta successfully navigated.

By the end of 2025, Momenta has established partnerships with 24 global automakers, covering all major domestic passenger vehicle manufacturers, and 9 of the world's top 10 automakers are its customers. According to data from CIC Insights, from March 2025 to February 2026, in China's third-party urban NOA market, Momenta ranked first in the industry with a 65% market share, exceeding the combined market share of the 2nd to 5th players.

In terms of performance, Momenta has also achieved leapfrog growth during the reporting period. The prospectus shows that from 2023 to 2025, Momenta's operating revenue increased from RMB 743 million to RMB 2.413 billion, tripling in three years with an annual compound growth rate of over 80%. Meanwhile, by the end of 2025, the company's cash reserves exceeded RMB 100 billion.

It is worth mentioning that in public perception, Momenta is generally defined as an autonomous driving company, but Cao Xudong's ambitions go far beyond that. He positions the company as a builder of a foundational model for physics AI. In his view, the core of physics AI lies in the expansion of data scale and business scale, which form a positive feedback loop, and autonomous driving is currently the only field that can achieve both simultaneously.

In April this year, Momenta's R7 World Model was officially launched for mass production. This is a foundational model capable of understanding physical laws and simulating the evolution of the world, supporting multi-scenario applications in passenger vehicles, Robotaxi, and even Robovan.

This also explains why Momenta's IPO is hailed as the "first physics AI stock": the story it aims to tell is far larger than just autonomous driving.

From dropping out of Tsinghua to join Microsoft Research, to choosing a "non-consensus" path at the start of his entrepreneurial journey, and then abandoning the "intelligent driving" label to go public as the "first physics AI stock", looking back over the past decade, every key decision Cao Xudong made seems extraordinary. But running through all these choices is a clear logic: follow your heart and pursue what you truly love. As he once said: "The most important thing along the way is to work on things you genuinely enjoy with like-minded people, and that is what makes life vibrant."

Over 20 Financing Rounds Before IPO, Early Investors Saw Paper Profits Surpassing 100 Times

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, Momenta was already a highly sought-after star target in the primary market before its IPO — "more than 20 financing rounds in 10 years" is an astonishing record in any industry.

Back in January 2017, shortly after the company's establishment, it secured US$5 million in Series A financing led by Blue Lake Capital, with participation from Sinovation Ventures and ZhenFund. Two months later, Shunwei Capital stepped in to lead its Series A1 financing. In July of the same year, the company obtained another US$46 million in Series B1 financing, with investors including NIO Capital, Shunwei Capital, Daimler, Sinovation Ventures, and Ninebot Capital.

For Ninebot Capital, this investment is undoubtedly a remarkable milestone in the institution's AI portfolio. Founder Wang Xiao recalled that he first met Cao Xudong in 2016, shortly after the latter started his business. "My first impression was that this young man was full of ideas, ambitious yet passionate, intelligent and pragmatic — not the type who talks big." This profile perfectly matched the "young high-potential" entrepreneurs that Ninebot has always favored.

During their conversation, Cao Xudong shared his views on autonomous driving and his preliminary ideas for its implementation, believing that data-driven approaches are the decisive factor in making autonomous driving a reality. This aligned exactly with Ninebot's philosophy. Right after the meeting, Wang Xiao stated: "We must invest in this company." Later, Ninebot became the first institution to issue a term sheet to Momenta.

"At that time, Ninebot was still a relatively small institution, and our investment in Momenta set the record for the maximum amount of capital we invested in a single project back then," Wang Xiao noted.

Over the following year and a half, the company maintained a strong financing momentum, completing 7 rounds of financing intensively at an average pace of one round every two to three months. After a short lull, Momenta re-entered the spotlight in 2020 with a US$65 million Series C financing. What's more remarkable is that this financing sequence extended all the way to Series C13.

Xin Wang, a partner at Gaorong Capital, stated that when participating in the financing in 2025, the company's overall revenue and the growth rate of its License segment, the coverage rate among top overseas automakers, as well as its overall market share and revenue quality, all earned his deep respect. Beyond the L2 business, Momenta's L4 business is also steadily advancing, with the potential to expand into markets such as Robotaxi, Robovan, and Robotruck.

Due to full confidence in these fundamentals, Gaorong Capital took only two weeks from the initial meeting to completing the investment decision.

In addition to the aforementioned institutions, behind Momenta's more than 20 financing rounds, its shareholders are almost all from an "all-star" lineup. Specifically:

In terms of industrial capital, there are not only 7 top global automakers including SAIC Motor, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, BYD, Hyundai, and Chery, but also industry chain partners such as Bosch Group, Desay SV, Luxshare Precision, Uber, and Grab; as well as tech giants including Tencent, Ant Group, JD.com, and Alibaba Cloud;

Among financial investment institutions, top global firms such as Temasek, IDG Capital, Granite Asia, Shunwei Capital, NIO Capital, Yunfeng Capital, Blue Lake Capital, ZhenFund, CDH Investments, and Chunhua Capital are all on the list.

Furthermore, Momenta's shareholder list also includes state-backed funds such as Yuanhe Capital, CCB International, and China Merchants Venture Capital, as well as the sovereign wealth fund of the Sultanate of Oman — Oman Investment Authority.

According to the prospectus, Momenta's post-money valuation after Series A financing was US$27.5 million, and by the final round (Series C13), this figure had soared to US$6.185 billion.

With the company's successful listing, all the aforementioned investors have already realized paper gains.

This is especially true for investors who entered during the Series A round. According to the prospectus, the cost per share in the 2016 Series A round was US$0.45. Even calculated based on the IPO price of HK$295.6 (approximately US$37.7), the return has already multiplied 83 times.

Of course, for Cao Xudong and the institutional shareholders behind him, the listing is just a milestone, far from the finish line. On the one hand, from the enterprise's perspective, the "physics AI" label carries even greater ambitions. Now that the R7 World Model has just been launched for mass production, to truly realize its value, the company still needs to overcome multiple challenges from mass production to large-scale operation. For institutional shareholders, the lock-up period has not yet ended, and the current increase in share price is only a paper profit. Whether the stock price can stabilize after listing and maintain a sustained upward trend is the real test.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Dong 40 Tiao Capital" (ID: DsstCapital), written by Wang Manhua, edited by Wang Qingwu, and published with authorization from 36Kr.