Nvidia is latest investor to back AV startup Nuro in $203M funding round
Nvidia is among a group of new investors to back Nuro — which develops self-driving software for delivery and ride-hailing services — in a funding round that has reached $203 million.
The Silicon Valley startup announced Thursday that several investors, including existing backer Baillie Gifford, added another $97 million to its Series E round. New investors include Icehouse Ventures, Kindred Ventures, Nvidia, and Pledge Ventures. Uber, which last month said it would make a “multi-hundred-million dollar” investment in Nuro as part of a broader deal with the electric car maker Lucid, also participated.
Nvidia’s investment follows years of technical collaboration with Nuro. The startup uses Nvidia GPUs for its large-scale data processing and model training, and its latest compute model is built on the Nvidia Drive AGX Thor platform.
The first $106 million tranche of Series E funding was announced in April. Investment accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Tiger Global Management, Greylock Partners, and XN participated in that first block.
Nuro has raised $2.3 billion to date. Its Series E post-money valuation is $6 billion. That’s a 30% drop from its $8.6 billion valuation in 2021 when Nuro raised $600 million in a Series D round.
Much has changed in the past four years for Nuro and the broader autonomous vehicles industry. Like most startups in the nascent autonomous vehicle technology sector, Nuro was forced to examine its business model after economic conditions shut off the once-free flowing tap of capital and ushered in a period of consolidation.
Nuro went through several rounds of layoffs in 2022 and 2023 before overhauling its business strategy. In 2024, Nuro scrapped plans to own and operate a fleet of low-speed, on-road delivery bots, and instead focused its efforts on licensing its technology to automakers and mobility providers, like ride-hail and delivery companies.
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The pivot has appeared to gain some traction — notably in July when Uber announced plans to launch a robotaxi service using all-electric Lucid Gravity SUVs equipped with Nuro’s self-driving tech. Under the deal, Uber invested $300 million in Lucid and agreed to buy “at least” 20,000 of the EV maker’s Gravity SUVs over the next six years.
Uber also said it would invest an undisclosed “multi-hundred-million dollar” amount into Nuro. One source familiar with the agreement told TechCrunch the amount is more than Uber’s investment in Lucid.
A portion of Uber’s investment has gone toward the Series E round. The remaining investment will be parceled out to Nuro as the company hits certain milestones.
Nuro co-founder and president Dave Ferguson said in a statement that the company is well-positioned to continue its next phase of growth with the new capital. He added that the company, which employs about 700 people, will focus on delivering new commercial partnerships to realize autonomy at global scale.
Kirsten Korosec is a reporter and editor who has covered the future of transportation from EVs and autonomous vehicles to urban air mobility and in-car tech for more than a decade. She is currently the transportation editor at TechCrunch and co-host of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. She is also co-founder and co-host of the podcast, “The Autonocast.” She previously wrote for Fortune, The Verge, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and CBS Interactive.
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