Nuro’s R2. Photo credit: Nuro

Autonomous delivery company Nuro has announced that it’s secured $500 million in Series C funding led by asset management firm T. Rowe Price, with participation from Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, and existing backers SoftBank and Greylock. The new round follows a $940 million Series B that Nuro closed in February last year.

Between the time Nuro last raised funding and up until now, the company secured the first and only federal exemption from the U.S. Department of Transportation for its R2 autonomous delivery vehicle and expanded its delivery partnerships with major retailers such as Domino’s, CVS, Kroger, and Walmart. The company has begun operating its autonomous vehicles on public roads in the states of California, Texas, and Arizona, running deliveries for retailers.

Nuro began making public deliveries in 2018 and has expanded its footprint since then. The company has a custom electric self-driving delivery vehicle named the R2 that transports only goods. 

Nuro was founded in 2016 by founded by Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson, two alumni of Google’s self-driving car project that later morphed into Waymo. Zhu and Ferguson are part of a crop of engineers who laid the groundwork for Google’s self-driving program before leaving to launch their own self-driving firms. 

Early in its days, Nuro drew backing from Chinese tech billionaire William Ding, who took a seat on the company’s board and helped guide its growth. Later, Nuro drew interest from investors including venture capital firm Greylock and the SoftBank Vision Fund and with this new round has now raised a total of $1.5 billion in funding. 

Nuro’s new round places its post-money valuation at $5 billion, compared to $2.7 billion from its funding round last year.

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