After months of hearty marketing efforts and large-scale expertise demos across the U.S., Nuro has secured $106 million in recent funding to assist scale its autonomous driving expertise and advance industrial partnerships.
The Collection E spherical brings Nuro’s complete funding raised to $2.2 billion and its valuation to $6 billion. That’s a drop from the $8.6 billion post-money valuation Nuro secured after its $600 million Collection D in 2021, however most startup valuations have come down from the highs seen throughout the period of straightforward cash.
Often, a down spherical could be trigger for concern, as it would replicate diminished investor confidence amongst slower-than-expected progress. That stated, it’s a troublesome funding surroundings on the market. It’s additionally doable that in Nuro’s case, the corporate may have much less capital because it pursues a latest enterprise pivot that now focuses on licensing its self-driving expertise to automotive OEMs, industrial supply fleets, and ride-hail firms.
TechCrunch reported on Nuro’s shift in technique within the fall of final yr.
Nuro’s earlier go-to-market plan revolved round constructing and working cute on-road supply robots that might carry solely items, not passengers, for companions like Domino’s. However constructing automobiles is pricey work, and Nuro was burning money quick.
After a number of rounds of layoffs and placing its manufacturing plans on maintain, Nuro determined to focus as an alternative on beefing out its self-driving expertise, which it had been repeatedly testing in California and Texas. In September 2024, Dave Ferguson, Nuro’s co-founder and president, instructed TechCrunch the corporate would depend on developments in AI to speed up its autonomy progress, which might prolong its runway from 1.5 years to three.5 years.
This new spherical doesn’t essentially appear to increase that runway additional. A Nuro spokesperson instructed TechCrunch the spherical will assist industrial growth plans via 2027.
Regardless of the down spherical, it’s a very good signal for Nuro that its backers are principally current institutional traders – like T. Rowe Value Associates, Constancy Administration & Analysis Firm, Tiger World Administration, Greylock Companions, and XN LP – in addition to strategic companions.
“We’re excited to see robust investor enthusiasm for our Collection E,” stated Jiajun Zhu, co-founder and CEO of Nuro, in a press release. “Our expertise, years of expertise with driver-out Stage 4 deployments, and give attention to licensing uniquely place us to assist automakers, mobility platforms, and industrial fleets speed up their autonomy roadmaps.”
Whereas Nuro nonetheless isn’t sharing which strategic traders have joined the spherical, the corporate has current relationships with Uber and Toyota via its investor Woven Capital, the enterprise arm of Toyota.
Nuro’s new enterprise mannequin places it in direct competitors with startups like U.Ok.-based Wayve, which additionally hopes to see its expertise powering the whole lot from private autonomous automobiles to robotaxi fleets.
This text has been up to date with extra details about Nuro’s runway.