Autonomous vehicle company Nuro raises US$600m in funding

Nuro, an autonomous vehicle (AV) company, has raised $600 million in a series D round of funding from high-profile investors, including Tiger Global Management and Google.

The Silicon Valley-based startup will use the financing to support the development and deployment of Nuro’s autonomous delivery service in communities across the country.

The series D round will enable Nuro to continue its commercialisation of zero-occupant autonomous delivery vehicles and will assist Nuro in addressing long-standing pain points and shifting consumer trends accelerated by COVID-19.

“The arrival of ubiquitous on-demand ecommerce is changing the way we access goods. Demand for local deliveries is exploding. Nuro is the bridge to an era of sustainable, low cost, autonomous local delivery,” said Griffin Schroeder, Partner at Tiger Global.

Creating new partnerships to support expansion

The company’s custom electric autonomous vehicles are designed to bring the things you need—from produce to prescriptions—right to your home. It has piloted autonomous local delivery for communities in Texas, Arizona, and California—for less driving and more thriving.

“Kroger launched its partnership with Nuro in 2018 to explore grocery delivery through autonomous vehicles,” said Yael Cosset, Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer for 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 has 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 important data from the vehicles. Through their new partnership, Nuro and Google will also explore opportunities together to strengthen and transform local commerce.

Earlier this year, Nuro announced a $40 million investment 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. Nuro has also recently announced a multi-year partnership with FedEx and has piloted pizza delivery with Domino’s in Houston. The latest funding round will further equip the company to expand its team, deploy its solution at scale, and advance its industry-leading technology.