Nuro, autonomous delivery car maker, gets $600mn in Series D venture

On Tuesday, California autonomous carmaker Nuro, whose driverless delivery cars have been actively deployed for the past three years by grocery giant Kroger, announced that it has raised a $600 million Series D venture capital round. The funding round was led by Tiger Global Management with participation from Baillie Gifford, Fidelity, Gaorong Capital, Google, Kroger, SoftBank Vision Fund 1, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price, Woven Capital, and other existing investors.

Nuro says it will use the funds to support the development and deployment of its autonomous delivery service in communities across the United States. In particular, the company wants to address long-standing pain points and shifting consumer trends accelerated by COVID-19.

“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 Nuro co-founder and president Dave Ferguson. “We believe this investment will allow us to accelerate our commercialization strategy and better everyday life with Nuro’s technology.”

“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, which led the round.

Concurrent with the completion of the capital raise, Nuro has 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, Texas. The latest funding round will further equip the company to expand its team, deploy its solution at scale, and advance its industry-leading technology.

These new collaborations are complementary to Nuro’s longest-standing pilot project: its grocery delivery partnership with Kroger.

“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.”