Nuro, Inc.
Company typePrivate
IndustryRobotics
Founded2016; 8 years ago (2016)
Founders
  • Jiajun Zhu
  • Dave Ferguson
Headquarters
Mountain View, California
,
United States
Key people
Jiajun Zhu (CEO)
Number of employees
1,200 (2022)[1]
Websitenuro.ai

Nuro, Inc. 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 three 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 November 2022, Nuro announced layoffs of 20 percent of its staff, or approximately 300 employees.[1]

In May 2023, Nuro announced that it would layoff off 30%, or about 340 employees. [15]

Partnerships

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

In September 2022, Uber and Nuro Announced 10-year partnership for autonomous food deliveries starting in California and Texas.[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 Hawkins, Andrew J. (November 18, 2022). "Robot delivery startup Nuro is laying off 20 percent of its workers". The Verge. Retrieved February 26, 2023.
  2. ^ Hawkins, Andrew J. (January 30, 2018). "Two ex-Google engineers built an entirely different kind of self-driving car". The Verge. Retrieved February 25, 2023.
  3. ^ Wiggers, Kyle (May 22, 2020). "Autonomous delivery companies stress need for clearer rules on deployment". VentureBeat. Retrieved February 25, 2023.
  4. ^ Davies, Alex (June 28, 2018). "Get Yer Bread and Milk From Kroger's Cute New Delivery Robot". WIRED. ISSN 1059-1028.
  5. ^ Bergen, Mark (June 11, 2018). "Nuro's Driverless Cars Don't Have to Worry About Passenger Safety". Bloomberg.com.
  6. ^ Bhuiyan, Johana (September 15, 2016). "Meet the startup that two of Google's top self-driving engineers left to create". Recode. Vox. Retrieved February 25, 2023.
  7. ^ "California start-up Nuro unveils autonomous delivery van, raises $92 million". Reuters. San Francisco. Reuters. January 30, 2018. Retrieved February 25, 2023.
  8. ^ "Driverless delivery startup Nuro gets $940 million SoftBank investment". Reuters. Reuters. February 11, 2019. Retrieved February 25, 2023.
  9. ^ Hempel, Jessi (September 4, 2019). "LinkedIn Top Startups 2019: The 50 hottest U.S. companies to work for now". LinkedIn. Retrieved February 25, 2023.
  10. ^ Korosec, Kirsten (November 9, 2020). "Autonomous delivery startup Nuro hits $5 billion valuation on fresh funding of $500 million". TechCrunch.
  11. ^ Schubarth, Cromwell (December 23, 2020). "Self-driving delivery unicorn Nuro picks up Ike Robotics". Silicon Valley Business Journal. American City Business Journals. Retrieved February 25, 2023.
  12. ^ Korosec, Kirsten (December 23, 2020). "Nuro acquires autonomous trucking startup Ike". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 25, 2023.
  13. ^ Wiggers, Kyle (December 23, 2020). "Nuro acquires self-driving truck startup Ike". VentureBeat. Retrieved February 25, 2023.
  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. ^ "Nuro lays off 30 percent of staff, shifts focus to R&D". Engadget. May 12, 2023. Retrieved September 18, 2023.
  16. ^ Dickey, Megan Rose (June 28, 2018). "Self-driving car startup Nuro teams up with Kroger for same-day grocery delivery". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 26, 2023.
  17. ^ Davies, Alex (June 17, 2019). "Nuro's Pizza Robot Will Bring You a Domino's Pie". WIRED. ISSN 1059-1028.
  18. ^ Murphy, Mike (June 17, 2019). "Dominos is about to start delivering pizzas with autonomous robots". Quartz. Retrieved June 21, 2019. Nuro will deliver Domino's pizza with its robots in Houston
  19. ^ Korosec, Kirsten (May 28, 2020). "Nuro's self-driving vehicles to deliver prescriptions for CVS Pharmacy". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 26, 2023.
  20. ^ Korosec, Kirsten (December 1, 2021). "Nuro and 7-Eleven to pilot autonomous delivery service in California". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 26, 2023.
  21. ^ "Uber and Nuro Announce 10-Year Partnership for Autonomous Food Deliveries Starting in California and Texas". PR Newswire. San Francisco. PRNewswire. September 8, 2022. Retrieved September 9, 2022.
  22. ^ Davies, Alex. "Nuro's Self-Driving R-1 Doesn't Drive You. It Drives Stuff". WIRED. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved February 26, 2023.
  23. ^ Dickey, Megan Rose (August 16, 2018). "Nuro and Kroger are deploying self-driving cars for grocery delivery in Arizona today". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 26, 2023.
  24. ^ Pollack, Neal (August 28, 2018). "Road-Testing the First Autonomous Car Grocery Delivery Service". The Drive. Retrieved February 26, 2023.
  25. ^ Rosenholtz, Jared (December 26, 2020). "The Toyota Prius Will Drive Itself Before Any Tesla". CarBuzz. Retrieved February 26, 2023.
  26. ^ Lee, Timothy B. (December 18, 2018). "Kroger-owned grocery store begins fully driverless deliveries". Ars Technica. Retrieved February 26, 2023.
  27. ^ "Self-driving delivery van ditches 'human controls'". BBC News. BBC. February 6, 2020. Retrieved February 26, 2023.
  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 February 26, 2023.
  29. ^ McFarland, Matt (February 6, 2020). "Autonomous delivery companies stress need for clearer rules on deployment". CNN Business. Washington, DC: CNN. CNN. Retrieved January 21, 2020. US clears the way for this self-driving vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals

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