Autonomous delivery startup Nuro has just secured $600 million through a fundraising round that, according to TechCrunch, pushes its valuation to around $8.6 billion.
This latest funding round included investors such as Google, Tiger Global Management, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Gaorong Capital, SoftBank Vision Fund 1, and T. Rowe Price Associates.
Business Wire reports that Nuro has also signed a five-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud that will support the scale and capacity required to run self-driving simulation workloads, machine learning to improve model accuracy, and storage to manage important date from the vehicles. Google’s involvement with Nuro is interesting as Nuro was actually founded by former Google engineers Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu who formerly worked on the tech giant’s ‘Firefly’ self-driving project.
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“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,” Ferguson said in a statement. “We believe this investment will allow us to accelerate our commercialization strategy and better everyday life with Nuro’s technology.”
Nuro plans to invest $40 million to develop two new facilities in southern Nevada consisting of an end-of-line manufacturing facility and a closed-course test track to commercialize and scale production of the company’s third-generation autonomous vehicle. Nuro has also worked with Domino’s on autonomous pizza delivery in Houston and is also piloting its technology with the likes of CVS pharmacies, FedEx, Walmart, and Kroger.
