In Silicon Valley, a raging battle is brewing to become the first-mover in autonomous driving. Google's (GOOG  ) Waymo was the first to test autonomous vehicles in California. Now, it's joined by Alibaba's (Baba  ) AutoX which recently filed its first test permit for its self-driving vehicle with no in-person backup driver.

So far, nearly 60 companies have tested autonomous vehicles with a backup driver. Waymo is the first company to test cars with no backup drivers, while AutoX is seeking to be the second. Both companies employ a backup system with a remote operator. AutoX's application comes at a time, when there is increased scrutiny on Chinese tech companies operating in the U.S., especially in matters related to sensitive technology and growth industries.

AutoX's Rise

AutoX's rise is also notable given that it's much smaller and newer than other major players in the space including Waymo, GM's (GM  ) Cruise, Uber (Uber  ), and Tesla (TSLA  ), AutoX was started in 2016 by former Princeton professor Jianxiong Xiao. Its major investors include Ali Baba and Dongfeng Motor Group, helping it raise $143 million in venture capital. Despite obstacles, the company has been remarkably competitive with its better-funded and more established peers.

Market Opportunity

While the technological challenges of perfecting autonomous driving are immense, the fruits for the winners are obvious. Like most technology niches, it's fair to expect that a handful of firms will dominate. Companies with first-mover advantage gain market share. This results in increased funding and more feedback to improve performance even further. In a way, it's mimicking the same network effects of a social network which gets more powerful as it grows.

The eventual market opportunity for autonomous vehicles is in the trillions of dollars. It would also upturn wide swathes of the economy in productive and destructive ways. It would lead to millions of jobs lost for truck drivers and possibly even lead to lower car sales if autonomous taxis become cheap and abundant. Safety would also significantly improve.

Currently, car manufacturers have begun integrating low-level autonomous features into cars which are already making them safer like lane correction, blind-spot cameras, collision detection, and automated parking. It's expected that within two years, fully autonomous vehicles may become commercially available, using similar technology that Waymo and AutoX are currently testing.