Mass Hiring from JD.com and Patent ‘Switcheroo’: Is Jiushi’s ‘Global Leadership’ Actually Stolen?

Some time ago in Changping District, Beijing, a collision occurred between a driverless delivery vehicle and a private car. The car owner told reporters that at the time of the accident, he was turning from a service road onto the main road when the unmanned vehicle suddenly came driving in from his left. Because the robot car is small, he did not notice it in time. The unmanned vehicle then struck the left front side of the car with its right-rear flank.What is even more astonishing is that after the collision, the unmanned vehicle did not stop at all and simply drove away, staging a complete hit-and-run on public roads.Subsequently, traffic authorities concluded that the robot car violated regulations by “operating outside its designated registered area”, in breach of the Beijing Administrative Measures for Road Testing and Commercial Demonstration of Unmanned Delivery Vehicles.According to reports from Southern Metropolis Daily, The Beijing News and other media, the vehicle is produced by the brand “Jiushi”.Ironically, on Jiushi Intelligent’s official website, the company boasts that it is a “globally leading L4 autonomous driving R&D enterprise,” claiming its vehicles can “effectively detect environmental changes up to 300 meters in front and behind, and 100 meters to both sides.”On one hand, their vehicles repeatedly behave recklessly on open roads and are involved in safety incidents; on the other hand, the company self-proclaims as “world leading.” Between these contradictions, more and more of the “dark side” of this once-celebrated startup is beginning to surface.

The company loudly declares technological leadership, yet reality keeps delivering blows to that claim.Because large-scale deployment remains extremely difficult, autonomous driving is known in the industry as one of the biggest “bottomless pits” in the automotive sector. With tightening regulations in recent years, many autonomous-driving companies have become relatively low-key. Jiushi, however, has been unusually high-profile.Besides dubbing itself “global leading,” its website also defines the company as a global urban logistics autonomous driving R&D and application enterprise, integrating technology development, product design, and commercialization, and claiming it possesses a fully self-developed L4 stack ready for scale.Such grand claims also translate into extremely rapid product iteration. In less than two years, Jiushi has rolled out multiple models and achieved deployment speed far above the industry average.But Changping is not the only accident. Jiushi vehicles have been involved in at least three reported traffic incidents:Beijing Changping – Collision & Hit-and-Run: Reveals a lack of basic accident response logic.Xi’an – Rear-End Collision: Caused by human takeover error, suggesting potential flaws in human-machine collaboration design.Xianyang – Dragging an E-bike: Because the system failed to detect a deformed obstacle; Jiushi itself admitted this was a “system defect.”

Taken together, these accidents expose serious weaknesses in core capabilities such as evasive behavior, emergency handling, and obstacle perception — fundamental functions every L4 system must master across diverse scenarios.Outside observers are beginning to realize that Jiushi may have greatly exaggerated its technical prowess.A further question naturally arises:Do the frequent safety incidents indirectly indicate that Jiushi’s L4 autonomous driving technology has not yet reached commercial standards — at least not the standards required for operation on open public roads?And has the company’s extraordinarily fast iteration come at the cost of insufficient safety validation?Needless to say, safety must always be the baseline for autonomous driving. If “global leading” remains merely a slogan without being implemented in real products, or if testing and operations violate regulations, then this is absolutely irresponsible toward customers and society.A deeper cause may lie in the fact that Jiushi’s so-called “core technology” likely did not originate from genuine independent breakthroughs, but rather from large-scale recruitment of JD Logistics’ autonomous driving team and a “repackaging” of JD’s technology.The technology stack in question was originally the result of years of heavy investment by JD Logistics, refined through its massive logistics network and countless real operational scenarios.

When Jiushi’s founding team took theoretical technology out of JD and attempted to build a standalone business without the original deployment scenarios and operational infrastructure, their so-called “leading technology” behaved like a transplanted organ suffering rejection: deprived of scenario data, mature operational processes, and continuous iteration, the system’s weaknesses became obvious once exposed to the complex, ever-changing conditions of open roads.Did Jiushi Start by “Digging JD’s Corner”?Public information shows that Jiushi’s core founders include Kong Qi, Zhuang Li, and Zhu Weicheng — essentially the backbone of Baidu’s and JD’s autonomous driving teams.In September 2018, Kong left Baidu after seven years and joined JD as vice president and chief scientist of autonomous driving. He once explained that pure internet experience left him lacking understanding of logistics, and that only a combination of technology and industry could make autonomous driving actually deployable. Moving “from Baidu to JD,” he said, was “a journey from theory to practice.”Zhuang Li worked at Baidu’s US research center from 2014–2019, then joined JD as senior scientist. Zhu Weicheng had a nearly identical trajectory.Whether their moves were directly tied to Kong is unclear, but the fact is that all three became colleagues again after joining JD Logistics. Even stranger: their joining and leaving dates were almost perfectly aligned.Industry insiders reveal that between September and October 2021, Zhuang, Zhu, and Kong successively left JD Logistics, and soon after became Jiushi’s founding team.Yet corporate records show Jiushi was registered in August 2021.

Does this mean they had already planned their collective entrepreneurial exit while still on JD’s payroll?More tellingly, between late 2021 and early 2022, at least a dozen other key JD autonomous driving R&D personnel also left to join Jiushi.Everyone in the industry knows JD’s non-compete system is strict and systematic, especially for senior management and core technical roles: for up to two years after leaving, they are forbidden to engage in businesses that overlap or compete with JD’s core sectors (e-commerce, logistics, technology).Although the details of these individuals’ agreements are unknown, if non-compete clauses existed, then their collective exit would constitute open violation and malicious poaching.For such severe infringement of its commercial interests, JD would almost certainly not sit idle.After its founding, Jiushi quickly raised massive financing, powered largely by technology, personnel, and resources obtained during the JD period:US$100M in Series A and US$300M in Series B, with investors including Baidu (former employer of the founders) and Meituan, JD’s biggest competitor in the mobility/logistics space — effectively placing Jiushi directly across from JD.Such rapid deployment may now expose Jiushi to both legal and ethical trials.Jiushi’s press releases loudly claim “full stack independent R&D.” Yet starting January 2022, Jiushi and its affiliates have filed a large number of patents in which the inventors are all former JD employees.

For example, Zhuang Li appears as an inventor on JD patents as early as 2019 describing technologies directly tied to autonomous driving, and later appears again on multiple Jiushi patents describing extremely similar methods.This raises obvious questions:Are Jiushi’s patents effectively derived from JD’s R&D achievements?Do they infringe JD’s intellectual property?Do they violate the Patent Law of the People’s Republic of China?According to the Patent Law, inventions completed as part of duties or using employer resources are “service inventions,” and the patent rights belong to the employer.The 2023 Implementing Regulations further clarify that inventions made within one year after leaving, but still connected to one’s former work, also belong to the original employer.From this perspective, the risk faced by Jiushi’s founders is extremely high.In fact, warning bells have already sounded in the industry.A notable precedent is when Geely sued WM Motor for stealing trade secrets and infringing technology — and won.In that case, nearly 40 senior managers and engineers left Geely; more than 30 immediately joined WM and used Geely’s chassis secrets to file patents and rapidly release models. The Supreme People’s Court ultimately determined that this constituted organized, improper acquisition of trade secrets and awarded Geely more than RMB 640 million — the highest damages ever recorded in Chinese IP litigation.

The Court even applied anti-unfair competition rules to shift the burden of proof onto WM to prove that the information was not confidential — a burden they failed to meet.As Jiushi’s exclusive Series A financial advisor revealed, the company is delivering hundreds of vehicles per month and has reportedly reached positive gross margin and cash flow in operations.But what is not mentioned is that the founding team’s mass exit and reuse of original technologies objectively siphoned off customers and accelerated commercialization in ways that violate professional ethics.On one side: claims of “world-leading L4 technology.”On the other: frequent accidents and even hit-and-run behavior on open roads.On one side: bold statements of “full-stack self-developed” innovation.On the other: a founding team that appears to have carried JD’s core technology team out wholesale.Jiushi’s rocket-like rise shines brightly, but beneath that light lies lingering doubt about the authenticity of its technology, its commercial morality, and its legal compliance.Once JD initiates legal action, Jiushi will have to prove that its technology does not constitute trade secrets. If the situation resembles WM’s case, the consequences could be enormous.Innovation speed can easily mask underlying truth.But in autonomous driving, safety is the lifeline, and respect for law and fair competition is the foundation for survival.Regulators cannot and will not ignore behavior that undermines market fairness.If a company’s expansion is built on ignoring hidden dangers and encroaching on others’ interests, then even the most dazzling record may eventually become the seed of its collapse.