Some biiiig money is going behind getting robots to deliver stuff to your doorstep. Yesterday, autonomous delivery startup Nuro got a huge influx of cash ($940M) from Softbank. 💸
Ultimately, Nuro wants to bring driverless delivery vehicles to the masses. How it works: Nuro's current “R1” vehicle looks like a mini compact car, and customers can request and track a delivery through the company's smartphone app. After the vehicle arrives, users verify the order with a password or biometric authentication. Nuro is currently operating these fully driverless vehicles on public roads in Scottsdale, Arizona, and charging $5.95 per delivery.
Nuro is part of the growing last mile delivery space, where startups are rushing to own the category. 📦
About a month ago, Postmates debuted Serve, a cute last-mile delivery rover that looks like a mix of WALL-E and a Minion. There's also Starship, a robotics firm founded in 2014 by the co-founders of Skype. Marble, another autonomous delivery firm, debuted its self-driving robots in 2017 and already partnered with DoorDash and Yelp. Robomart describes itself as a “self-driving store” — it's sort of like a self-driving vending machine. BoxBot was founded in 2016 by engineers from Tesla and Uber with a focus on last-mile logistics. And Amazon quietly acquired robotics company Dispatch to build Scout, its own on-demand delivery robot that debuted last month.
How Nuro is different: The company has been largely focused on developing a self-driving “stack,” which it's now licensing to others. For example, Ike, an autonomous trucking startup, is now using Nuro's technology — and Nuro is getting a stake in Ike. Ike was founded by ex-Apple, Google and Uber employees and announced a new $52M round last week. In June, Nuro also partnered with Kroger Co. — the largest supermarket chain in the U.S. — to test driverless grocery deliveries. 🛒
Nuro has built just six vehicles so far, and plans to use the new cash to make more.
We're excited to watch how autonomous delivery unfolds — especially since only three percent of grocery sales in the U.S. are currently happening online. 😳
Product News! 😻
Chris Hemsworth launched a new fitness app. Reddit raised a whopping $300M at a $3B valuation. Bumble launched a paid feature that brings your profile to the top of people's swipe page. This electric toothbrush got $30M. Amazon bought home Wifi startup eero. And LinkedIn debuted LinkedIn Live, a new live video broadcast service.
