Hou Out at TuSimple Amid Rumors of Employee Poaching

Autonomous trucking company TuSimple continues to deal with problems as co-founder and former CEO Xiaodi Hou has left the company. Hou founded TuSimple with Mo Chen in 2015. Chen has since left the company to form Hydron.

Hou was being investigated for attempting to poach TuSimple employees to join him in forming a new company, according to a Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.

TuSimple appeared to be making major advancements in self-driving trucks in 2021 when a demonstration of its fully autonomous “driver out” capability was successful during an 80 mile run in Arizona from Tucson to Phoenix.

Hou owns approximately ten percent of TuSimple shares. Last year, he transferred his super-voting rights that he and Chen received when TuSimple went public in April 2021. Now, Chen controls about 59% of the voting rights in the company.

Since the beginning of 2022, the once promising startup began experiencing problems. Last March, Hou pushed out CEO Cheng Lu to take over day-to-day operation of the company.

In April, a TuSimple truck with a human supervisor was prompted by an out-of-date computer command and crossed a lane of traffic on Interstate 10 near Tucson, crashing into a concrete barrier. There were no injuries, but media exposure led to questions about TuSimple’s readiness to put robot trucks on the road.

In October, claiming he lacked transparency in his duties, the independent directors fired Hou, but he, in turn, fired them, leaving the company in chaos. In November, Chen briefly returned as an executive chairman and the company appointed four new directors. Cheng Lu also returned as CEO.

Finally, in December, Navistar International ended a partnership with TuSimple, leaving them with a redundant chassis which is key to autonomous trucks. In response, Cheng laid off 350 workers, about 25% of the company, to focus the company on research and development rather than freight delivery.