Tiancheng Lou

Chinese businessman and computer programmer

Tiancheng Lou (Chinese: 楼天城; pinyin: Lóu Tiānchéng; born 1986) is a Chinese businessman who is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Pony.ai, an autonomous vehicle technology company. He is also a competitive programmer whose achievements include winning the Google Code Jam twice in 2008 and 2009, winning the Topcoder Open Marathon in 2015 and being a gold medalist at the 2004 International Olympiad in Informatics, coming third overall.2

From Wikipedia’s article on Tiancheng Lou (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born 1986.1

About

In terms of prize money won in major competitions, Lou is currently the most successful competitive programmer from China.

In 2017, Lou was included in the Innovators Under 35 list by MIT Technology Review magazine. In 2022, Business Insider named him as one of the 35 under 35 rising stars of the autonomous-vehicle industry.

From Wikipedia’s article on Tiancheng Lou, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2

Companies

Holdings

Stock this person has reported owning, from the forms officers and directors file with the SEC. See the biggest insider stakes.

Shares held

  • Pony.ai PONY196,546 shares9$983.7K at $5.00Sep 29, 2026

As of each latest filing. The line shows shares held over time.

Recent filings

  • Sep 25, 2026Returned to company 25,729 shares at $6.89 of Pony.ai9
  • Sep 25, 2026Exercised options 31,250 shares of Pony.ai9
  • Jun 25, 2026Returned to company 31,250 shares at $6.93 of Pony.ai10
  • Jun 25, 2026Exercised options 31,250 shares of Pony.ai10
  • Mar 25, 2026Returned to company 31,250 shares at $11.39 of Pony.ai11
  • Mar 25, 2026Exercised options 31,250 shares of Pony.ai11

Early life and education

  • Date not recordedTsinghua University3

Lou was born in 1986 in Jinan, Shandong province. When he was in sixth grade of primary school, he moved to Hangzhou, Zhejiang province due to his parents' work. Both of his parents worked at Zhejiang University where his father was in the School of Public Affairs while his mother was in the Department of Chemistry.

Lou attended Hangzhou No. 14 High School where he graduated in 2004. In 2004, Lou came third place overall in the 2004 International Olympiad in Informatics where he won a gold medal. Due to his performance, he received a recommendation to attend Tsinghua University at the department of Computer Science and Technology.

Lou graduated from Tsinghua University in 2008 with a bachelor's degree in Computer science. After finishing his first degree, he joined the Institute for Theoretical Computer Science at Tsinghua University as a PHD candidate in 2008 and earned his PhD in 2012. Lou was part of the university team in the 2007 and 2009 International Collegiate Programming Contest which won second place both times.

From Wikipedia’s article on Tiancheng Lou (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Career

Occupation: programmer.5

After earning his PhD from Tsinghua University in 2012, Lou joined Google as an engineer and in 2015 worked in their autonomous vehicle team.

At the start of 2016, he left Google to work briefly at Quora and then Baidu.

In December 2016, he left Baidu along with Baidu colleague, James Peng (Chief Architect for Autonomous Driving), to found autonomous driving startup Pony.ai. As of 2018, Lou is the chief technology officer of the firm.

From Wikipedia’s article on Tiancheng Lou (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Personal life

  • CitizenshipPeople's Republic of China6

Sources

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