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Nuro

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Nuro
Company typePrivate
IndustryRobotics
Founded2016; 8 years ago (2016)
Headquarters
Mountain View, California
,
United States
Key people
  • Jiajun Zhu (co-founder)
  • Dave Ferguson (co-founder)
Number of employees
500+[1]
Websitewww.nuro.ai

Nuro is an American robotics company based in Mountain View, California. Founded by Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson,[2] Nuro develops autonomous delivery vehicles and is the first company to receive an autonomous exemption from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.[3]

History

The company was founded by engineers of Google's self driving car project, Waymo. Zhu served as the principal software engineer and Ferguson joined in 2011 as the principal machine learning engineer.[4][5] Zhu and Ferguson left Waymo in 2016 and founded Nuro that September.[6]

Nuro brought its robotic delivery vehicles to market in January 2018 with $92 million in funding from Greylock Partners and Gaorong Capital.[7]

In February 2019 Nuro raised $940 million from SoftBank Group, which valued the company at $2.7 billion. Nuro said it would use the funds to expand its delivery service to new areas, add new partners, expand its fleet and grow its business.[8] In September 2019, the company was ranked No.10 on LinkedIn's Top 50 Startups List for 2019.[9]

In November 2020, Nuro announced that they raised $500 million in their Series C funding round led by T. Rowe Price, with a post-money valuation of $5 billion.[10]

In December 2020, Nuro acquired self-driving trucking startup Ike Robotics.[11] Over 55 Ike employees (including its 3 founders) joined Nuro's staff after acquisition.[12][13]

In August 2021, Nuro announced that it would spend $40 million on the construction of a manufacturing facility and test track for its self-driving robot vehicles, located in southern Nevada.[14]

In September 2022, Uber and Nuro Announced 10-year partnership for autonomous food deliveries starting in California and Texas.[15]

In November 2022, Nuro announced layoffs of 20% of its staff, or approximately 300 employees.[1]

Partnerships

In June 2018, Nuro announced its first partnership with Kroger to test the fully autonomous delivery of groceries.[16][17] On June 17, 2019, Nuro announced its partnership with Domino's Pizza.[18] Nuro and Domino's announced that the service would launch in Houston later in 2019.[19] The company began prescription delivery through CVS Pharmacy in May 2020.[20] In December 2021, Nuro announced a partnership to commercially deliver 7-Eleven goods.[21]

Product

Nuro officially launched in January 2018 and revealed its first product, an electric self-driving local commerce delivery vehicle. Known as the R1, it weighs 1,500 pounds (680 kg) and is just over 6 feet (1.8 m) tall, about half the width of a sedan. This vehicle is designed to carry only cargo, with space for 12 grocery bags in the first model.[22]

The pilot launched on August 16, 2018, in Scottsdale, Arizona at a Fry's Food and Drug store. Initially, self-driving Toyota Prius cars were used for the pilot.[23][24][25] On December 18, 2018, the R1 was officially launched into the pilot.[26] In February 2020, Nuro announced its plans to test R2, the second generation of self-driving vehicles, in Houston, Texas.[27]

In April 2020, Nuro announced that the R2 prototype was being used to transport medical supplies around medical facilities in California.[28] The R2 is designed with no steering wheel, side view mirrors, or pedals.[29]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Andrew J. Hawkins (November 18, 2022). "Robot delivery startup Nuro is laying off 20 percent of its workers". The Verge. Retrieved November 18, 2022.
  2. ^ "Two ex-Google engineers built an entirely different kind of self-driving car". The Verge. Retrieved August 24, 2018.
  3. ^ "Autonomous delivery companies stress need for clearer rules on deployment". VentureBeat. May 22, 2020. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
  4. ^ "Get Yer Bread and Milk From Kroger's Cute New Delivery Robot". WIRED. Retrieved August 24, 2018.
  5. ^ "Nuro's Driverless Cars Don't Have to Worry About Passenger Safety". Bloomberg.com. June 11, 2018.
  6. ^ "Meet the startup that two of Google's top self-driving engineers left to create". Recode. Retrieved August 24, 2018.
  7. ^ Reuters Editorial. "California start-up Nuro unveils autonomous delivery van, raises..." U.S. Retrieved August 24, 2018. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  8. ^ "Driverless delivery startup Nuro gets $940 million SoftBank investment". Reuters. February 11, 2019. Retrieved February 11, 2019.
  9. ^ "LinkedIn Top Startups 2019: The 50 hottest U.S. companies to work for now". www.linkedin.com. Retrieved September 20, 2019.
  10. ^ "Autonomous delivery startup Nuro hits $5 billion valuation on fresh funding of $500 million". TechCrunch. Retrieved November 11, 2020.
  11. ^ Cromwell, Schubarth (December 23, 2020). "Self-driving delivery unicorn Nuro picks up Ike Robotics". American City Business Journals. Retrieved April 13, 2021.
  12. ^ "Nuro acquires autonomous trucking startup Ike". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 27, 2020.
  13. ^ Wiggers, Kyle (December 23, 2020). "Nuro acquires self-driving truck startup Ike". VentureBeat. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  14. ^ Hawkins, Andrew (August 26, 2021). "Nuro is building a factory and test track in Nevada for its autonomous delivery robots – The self-driving startup is dramatically expanding its footprint". The Verge. Retrieved September 1, 2021.
  15. ^ "Uber and Nuro Announce 10-Year Partnership for Autonomous Food Deliveries Starting in California and Texas". PR Newswire. September 8, 2022. Retrieved September 9, 2022.
  16. ^ https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2018/07/27/major-grocer-moves-on-phoenix-driverless-delivery.html [bare URL]
  17. ^ "Self-driving car startup Nuro teams up with Kroger for same-day grocery delivery". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 24, 2018.
  18. ^ Davies, Alex (June 18, 2019). "Nuro's Pizza Robot Will Bring You a Domino's Pie". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved June 21, 2019.
  19. ^ Murphy, Mike (June 17, 2019). "Dominos is about to start delivering pizzas with autonomous robots". Quartz. Retrieved June 21, 2019.
  20. ^ Nuro's self-driving vehicles to deliver prescriptions for CVS Pharmacy
  21. ^ Korosec, Kirsten. "Nuro and 7-Eleven to pilot autonomous delivery service in California". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 25, 2021.
  22. ^ Davies, Alex. "Nuro's Self-Driving R-1 Doesn't Drive You—It Drives Your Stuff". Wired.
  23. ^ "The Toyota Prius Will Drive Itself Before Any Tesla". CarBuzz. December 26, 2020. Retrieved December 27, 2020.
  24. ^ "Nuro and Kroger are deploying self-driving cars for grocery delivery in Arizona today". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 29, 2018.
  25. ^ Pollack, Neal. "Road-Testing the First Autonomous Car Grocery Delivery Service". The Drive. Retrieved August 29, 2018.
  26. ^ Lee, Timothy B. (December 18, 2018). "Kroger-owned grocery store begins fully driverless deliveries". Ars Technica. Retrieved January 3, 2019.
  27. ^ "Self-driving delivery van ditches 'human controls'". BBC News. February 6, 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  28. ^ Hawkins, Andrew (April 22, 2020). "Nuro is using delivery robots to help health care workers fighting COVID-19 – The self-driving delivery company is operating at two field hospitals in California". The Verge. Retrieved October 27, 2020.
  29. ^ "Autonomous delivery companies stress need for clearer rules on deployment". CNN.com. February 6, 2020. Retrieved January 21, 2020.
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