Nuro Raises $600M to Expand Self-Driving Delivery Vehicles
November 2, 2021
Nuro, which develops autonomous vehicles used in last-mile delivery applications, has announced raising $600 million in a new round of financing. The round was led by Tiger Global Management, and the new financing will support the development and deployment of Nuro’s autonomous delivery service in communities across the country.
In addition to Tiger, investors included Ballie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Gaorong Capital, Google, Kroger, SoftBank Vision Fund 1, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Woven Capital, as well as other existing investors.
“We’re thrilled to have the backing of these prominent investors and world class companies, and honored that they support our vision of improving communities and revitalizing local commerce,” said Dave Ferguson, co-founder and president of Nuro. “We believe this investment will allow us to accelerate our commercialization strategy and better everyday life with Nuro’s technology.”
The company said the funding will enable Nuro to continue its commercialization of zero-occupant autonomous delivery vehicles. The rethinking of autonomous vehicles and the opportunity to transform local commerce has garnered attention from prominent commercial partners in several industries, Nuro said. The latest funding round will assist Nuro in addressing long-standing pain points and shifting consumer trends, accelerated by COVID-19.
“Kroger launched its partnership with Nuro in 2018 to explore grocery delivery through autonomous vehicles,” said Yael Cosset, senior vice president and CIO at Kroger. “Since then, Kroger and Nuro completed thousands of deliveries to our customers – driving innovation that supports our expanding seamless ecosystem by creating consistent and rewarding customer experiences with scalable, sustainable, and profitable solutions.”
Nuro said it also signed a five year strategic partnership with Google Cloud to support the massive scale and capacity required to run self-driving simulation workloads, machine learning to improve model accuracy, and storage to manage data from the vehicles. Through the new partnership, Nuro and Google said they will explore opportunities to strengthen and transform local commerce.
Earlier this year, Nuro announced it was spending $40 million to develop two new facilities in Southern Nevada – an end-of-line manufacturing facility and world-class, closed-course test track – to commercialize and scale production of the company’s third-generation autonomous vehicle. The company also announced a multi-year partnership with FedEx, and has piloted pizza delivery with Domino’s in Houston.
More details on Nuro are available at its website.
