Asia Tech Wire (Apr 23) -- Turing Inc., a Japanese artificial intelligence startup aiming to overtake Tesla, plans to test fully autonomous driving by 2025, according to Nikkei.

Shunsuke Aoki, Turing's chief technology officer, said the company plans to test fully autonomous driving by 2025, much earlier than its initial forecast.

The wave of generative artificial intelligence has led to the development of AI-based self-driving technology much faster than expected, he said.

Aoki told Nikkei, "The battle for who will win in the full self-driving technology will be settled for the most part in the next three to five years."

Founded in 2021, Turing developed Heron, a machine learning AI model with up to 70 billion parameters.

The AI startup received backing from a subsidiary of Mizuho Financial Group Inc. and NTT Docomo Ventures Inc.

According to people familiar with the matter, Turing raised 3 billion yen ($19.4 million) in a seed round valuing it at $100 million.

In addition, the company plans to unveil a self-driving car with at least 30 minutes' driving range next year, develop a fully autonomous car and roll out as many as 10,000 units by 2030.

Turing is also pursuing the possibility of licensing its Heron to automakers interested in adopting the model.