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Nuro, the SoftBank-backed autonomous driving technology company, has closed a $203mn funding round involving Uber and Nvidia, as investor appetite in self-driving vehicles swells.
The deal brings the California-based company’s total valuation to $6bn, including new funds, Nuro said on Thursday.
The transaction comes as groups including Uber and Nvidia ratchet up spending in the space, with the ride-hailing platform and chipmaker making bets on autonomous driving technology.
Nuro closed the funding round several months after the company raised $106mn as part of a first tranche of investment. Baillie Gifford also participated in the most recent round.
Dave Ferguson, Nuro’s co-founder and president, said: “With this new capital, we’re well-positioned to continue our next phase of growth, which will see us focus on delivering new commercial partnerships to realise autonomy at global scale.”
Nuro was founded in Silicon Valley in 2016 by Jiajun Zhu and Ferguson, two veterans of Google’s self-driving car project, now known as Waymo. Nuro intended to build autonomous delivery robots, but has since pivoted to licensing its platform and services.
Waymo’s success in rolling out autonomous robotaxis across several US cities including Austin, Phoenix and San Francisco, has spurred investor interest in the space. Traditional carmakers such as General Motors and Ford are making investments in self-driving systems, while Amazon and Tesla are also pursuing fully autonomous vehicles.
Nuro offers its technology to carmakers and other providers and aims to provide systems that span so-called level 2 driver assist systems similar to those offered by car companies, through to fully autonomous level 4 systems.
The company signed a deal with Uber in July that will entail the ride-hailing platform and its fleet management partners purchasing up to 20,000 Gravity SUVs from electric-car maker Lucid that have been equipped with Nuro’s sensor technology and software. Uber invested $300mn into Lucid as part of the deal.
Uber has signed deals with nearly a dozen carmakers and autonomous vehicle technology providers since the beginning of this year.
Nvidia has made a range of autonomous driving bets and disclosed a $25mn position in China’s WeRide earlier this year. The company’s chips and software are used to train and run autonomous driving systems.
Nuro received investment from SoftBank in 2019 when it was focused on delivery robots. It has raised $2.3bn to date.