12th February 2019 Robotic delivery startup raises $1bn Nuro, an American robotics company based in Mountain View, California, yesterday announced that it has raised $940 million in financing from the SoftBank Vision Fund. To date, Nuro has raised over $1 billion from partners including SoftBank, Greylock Partners and Gaorong Capital. Nuro aims to make local deliveries fast and affordable with its self-driving service. This uses Nuro's custom unmanned road vehicle to run errands of all kinds – from picking up supermarket groceries to delivering dinner. Nuro strives to create a world where everything can be delivered affordably and on-demand. "We've spent the last two and a half years building an amazing team, launching our first unmanned service, working with incredible partners and creating technology to fundamentally improve our daily lives," said Nuro co-founder, Dave Ferguson. "This partnership gives us the opportunity to take the next step in realising our vision for local commerce and the broad application of our technology." In 2018, Nuro introduced its custom unmanned vehicle, secured a national partnership with Kroger to do grocery delivery, and licensed its self-driving technology to autonomous trucking company Ike. In December, it launched the first unmanned delivery service for the general public in Arizona. "Nuro's world-class team has successfully scaled their self-driving technology out of the lab and into the streets," said Michael Ronen, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. "In just two years Dave, Jiajun and team have developed Nuro from a concept into a real business using robotics to connect retailers to customers." Nuro will use this new financing to expand its delivery service to new geographies, add new partners, scale its fleet, extend and mature its general self-driving technology, and significantly grow its team.
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