Nuro, Inc. is an American

robotics Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

company based in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the population was 82,376 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mountain V ...

. Founded by Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson, Nuro develops autonomous delivery vehicles and is the first company to receive an autonomous exemption from the

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA ) is an agency of the U.S. federal government, part of the Department of Transportation, focused on automobile safety regulations. NHTSA is charged with writing and enforcing Feder ...

History

The company was founded by engineers of Google's self-driving car project,

Waymo Waymo LLC, formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, is an American autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It is a subsidiary of Google's parent company (Alphabet Inc., Alphabet Inc). T ...

. Zhu served as the principal software engineer and Ferguson joined in 2011 as the principal

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

engineer. Zhu and Ferguson left Waymo in 2016 and founded Nuro that September. Nuro brought its robotic delivery vehicles to market in January 2018 with $92 million in funding from

Greylock Partners Greylock Partners is one of the oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1965, with committed capital of over $3.5 billion under management. The firm focuses on early-stage companies in consumer and enterprise software. History Greylock wa ...

and

Gaorong Capital Gaorong Ventures (Gaorong; ) is a Beijing-based venture capital firm founded in 2014. The firm focuses on investments related to Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT). Background In January 2014, three former IDG Capital employees fo ...

. In February 2019 Nuro raised $940 million from

SoftBank Group is a Japanese multinational investment holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, that focuses on investment management. The group primarily invests in companies operating in technology that offer goods and services to customers in a m ...

, 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. In September 2019, the company was ranked on

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's Top 50 Startups List for 2019. In November 2020, Nuro announced that they raised $500 million in their Series C funding round led by

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, with a post-money valuation of $5 billion. In December 2020, Nuro acquired self-driving trucking startup Ike Robotics. Over 55 Ike employees (including its three founders) joined Nuro's staff after the acquisition. 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 Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

. In November 2022, Nuro announced layoffs of 20 percent of its staff, or approximately 300 employees. In May 2023, Nuro announced that it would layoff 30 percent of its staff, or approximately 340 employees.

Partnerships

In June 2018, Nuro announced its first partnership with

Kroger The Kroger Company, or simply Kroger, is an American retail company that operates (either directly or through its subsidiaries) supermarkets and multi-department stores throughout the United States. Founded by Bernard Kroger in 1883 in Cinc ...

to test the fully autonomous delivery of groceries. On June 17, 2019, Nuro announced its partnership with

Domino's Pizza Domino's Pizza, Inc., commonly referred to as Domino's, is an American multinational pizza restaurant chain founded in 1960 and led by CEO Russell Weiner. The corporation is Delaware General Corporation Law, Delaware-domiciled and headquartered ...

. Nuro and Domino's announced that the service would launch in

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later in 2019. The company began prescription delivery through

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in May 2020. In December 2021, Nuro announced a partnership to commercially deliver

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goods. In September 2022,

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...

and Nuro announced a 10-year partnership for autonomous food deliveries starting in California and Texas.

Product

Nuro officially launched in January 2018 and showcased its first product, an electric self-driving local commerce delivery vehicle. Known as the R1, it weighs and is just over 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. The pilot launched on August 16, 2018, in Scottsdale, Arizona at a

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store. Initially, self-driving

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cars were used for the pilot. On December 18, 2018, the R1 was officially launched into the pilot. In February 2020, Nuro announced its plans to test R2, the second generation of self-driving vehicles, in Houston, Texas. In April 2020, Nuro announced that the R2 prototype was being used to transport medical supplies around medical facilities in California. The R2 is designed with no steering wheel, side view mirrors, or pedals.

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://www.nuro.ai/ Electric vehicles Robotics organizations Self-driving car companies American companies established in 2016 Companies based in Mountain View, California

History

Partnerships

Product

See also

References

External links