It, which has cooperated with BYD, has given up making cars and switched to becoming an intelligent driving supplier.

At the end of last month, Nuro, a former North American intelligent driving "unicorn" enterprise, just completed its Series E additional financing.

Apart from occasional articles in technology self - media in recent years introducing its Chinese founders, Nuro, which started with unmanned logistics vehicles, doesn't have a high profile in the domestic public media.

The additional financing amount totaled $97 million. In addition to Uber and NVIDIA, other participants included Baillie Gifford (one of the major shareholders of Tesla), as well as investment funds such as Icehouse Ventures, Affinity Ventures, and Oath Ventures.

If we include the $106 million injected earlier this April by T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Investments, Tiger Global Management, Greylock, etc., the total amount of this round of financing reached $203 million (approximately 1.444 billion RMB).

It's worth mentioning that when the Series E financing was launched in April, the comprehensive valuation of the enterprise given by all parties was about $6 billion. Although this seems like a very large figure, compared with its valuation of up to $8.6 billion during the Series D financing in 2021, the decline exceeded 30%.

The latest product concept map officially released by Nuro last year shows that its business has transformed into an intelligent driving solution provider.

Despite the significant decline in valuation, for the enterprise, being able to raise new funds is obviously a matter of life and death. After all, due to the anxiety about profitability and when the investment can be recovered, global intelligent driving enterprises have just experienced the "capital winter" from last year to the beginning of this year.

For Nuro, this latest round of financing that lasted for half a year seems more like the last chance given by major capitals...

01

A "Unicorn" in a Special Track

"It's a cute robot driving on the road, delivering the fresh food we ordered to us."

The above - mentioned animated picture is intercepted from a promotional video released by Nuro in 2022, with its core content being the company's then - latest third - generation unmanned delivery vehicle.

According to the current classification we are used to, Nuro is a very typical artificial intelligence - based technology innovation enterprise. Located in San Francisco, California, USA, it is one of the Silicon Valley technology companies in a broad sense. It was co - founded in 2016 by Zhu Jiajun (formerly the chief software engineer of Google's self - driving car team) and Dave Ferguson (formerly the head of Google's computer vision and machine learning), both senior engineers from Google's former Waymo project.

Nuro's two co - founders, Dave Ferguson (left) and Zhu Jiajun (right)

Obviously, both of them have worked at Google and made great achievements in related fields. In particular, Zhu Jiajun graduated from the Department of Computer Science at Fudan University in 2004, then went to the United States for further studies and obtained a master's degree in artificial intelligence and computer vision from the University of Virginia in 2008, and then joined Google. To some extent, he can be regarded as an example for Chinese technical talents in the United States.

For the North American intelligent driving industry, 2016 was actually a very exciting year.

On the one hand, Waymo, founded in 2009, officially became independent from Google in December of this year. At the same time, the company also started preparations for the L5 - level "driverless" project by testing vehicles without safety drivers on board.

Since 2017, these experimental Robotaxis have been roaming all over Silicon Valley.

In addition, Cruise, the second - ranked "intelligent driving" enterprise at that time, founded in 2013, was acquired by General Motors for $1 billion in 2016 and incorporated into its autonomous driving strategic layout. At that time, Cruise was planning to launch its Robotaxi project.

Given the first - mover advantages of the above - mentioned enterprises and based on the two co - founders' understanding of their former employer, Nuro didn't intend to compete head - on with these early - starting giants in its early days. Instead, it chose the niche track of last - mile unmanned delivery, which is relatively easier to implement compared with Robotaxi.

Its intelligent driving technology is directly targeted at the "driverless" L5 level, but instead of focusing on manned vehicles, it aims at the track of road - legal unmanned delivery vehicles. It has successively launched the dedicated unmanned delivery vehicle R1 without a steering wheel or pedals, and the upgraded R2.

Nuro's original R - series unmanned delivery vehicles have a similar structure to similar products of domestic enterprises at the same period.

This functional positioning, which is significantly different from the mainstream Robotaxis at that time, and the relatively low speed compared with manned vehicles, enabled Nuro to quickly obtain special exemption qualifications from official regulatory agencies and become the first company to be approved to test such vehicles on public roads.

Since building the first - generation unmanned delivery prototype R1 in 2018, Nuro has successively established pilot cooperation with well - known North American retail giants such as Walmart and Domino's Pizza.

The biggest difference between R2 and R1 is not only the upgraded intelligent driving system but also the enlarged cargo box.

The North American capital circle is also quite optimistic about it. From 2018 to 2021, Nuro completed four rounds of financing. Investment giants in the United States such as Greylock, Gao Rong Capital, SoftBank, T. Rowe Price, Tiger Global Management, and even technology giants like Google have successively invested in it. To some extent, it can be said that half of the well - known venture capital institutions in the United States have placed bets on it. And Nuro's valuation once soared to $8.6 billion during the Series D financing in 2021.

02

The Road Ahead May Not Lead to Dawn

At the beginning of 2022, the cooperation project between Nuro and Chinese new energy giant BYD - the prototype of the third - generation pure - electric driverless delivery vehicle named Nuro was officially completed. The promotional video excerpted above features this highly - anticipated target product.

The cooperation project between Nuro and BYD started in August 2019. Its breakthrough lies in that through BYD's three - electric technology and new platform, the driving performance has been greatly improved. The more compact and reasonable internal layout can accommodate an independent refrigeration device, and both the software and hardware of its intelligent driving system use the latest versions. This third - generation unmanned delivery vehicle doesn't follow the original R - series naming convention but is named after the enterprise's name "Nuro", indicating the high expectations placed on it.

The third - generation "Nuro" unmanned delivery vehicle has a complete three - electric system and is equipped with a compression refrigeration device, basically realizing the original concept.

However, this didn't reverse the enterprise's business prospects.

In the middle of 2022, both the Chinese and American autonomous driving industries entered a trough later known as the "capital winter".

Nearly a decade ago, at the beginning of their entrepreneurship, various science and technology innovation enterprises that were once confident of achieving their technological goals within a few years, whether it's Waymo, Cruise mentioned above, or similar enterprises in China across the Pacific, and even Nuro, which specializes in the short - to medium - distance last - mile logistics track, were all trapped by the endless "long - tail problems" -

All kinds of rare and unexpected scenarios emerge one after another, such as a truck suddenly overturning across the lane with its roof painted in a light blue similar to the sky, or someone mischievously tying a "traffic cone" on the roof of a car, causing the intelligent driving system of the vehicle to malfunction. They have been unable to fulfill their initial technological promises for a long time.

The most typical "long - tail problem", a strange car accident that occurred in Shangshui Township, Chiayi County, Taiwan, China on June 1, 2020.

Of course, for Nuro, due to the characteristics of its main track, although it also faces similar "long - tail problems", its main dilemma is a cost issue.

Early unmanned logistics vehicles, whether it's the R1 or R2, all faced the problem of high manufacturing costs.

There are unconfirmed rumors that the cost of each original R2 engineering prototype was as high as $500,000. Although the sky - high price of this "hand - made" prototype isn't a big deal, the key lies in whether the subsequent business can keep up quickly - that is, whether there are enough retailers willing to purchase and use its products.

Even though the cost of the third - generation "Nuro" in cooperation with BYD is expected to be significantly reduced after mass production, its business prospects are still worrying.

In North America, food delivery platforms such as UberEats and DoorDash are highly developed. Through the crowdsourcing model, low - cost last - mile delivery services can be easily achieved. Although the labor cost in North America is relatively high, human delivery personnel have far more intelligence and execution ability than all current intelligent devices.

Nuro originally planned to build a factory in Nevada in 2022 to produce the third - generation logistics vehicles, and the factory site had already been selected.

Even if the price of the new - generation delivery vehicle can be controlled at around $50,000, considering its endurance and single - vehicle transportation capacity, compared with the "human - powered" transportation of the crowdsourcing model, whether it's retailers purchasing them on their own or Nuro operating a self - built fleet to provide services, where is the cost advantage?

03

There Are No "Unicorns" in the Intelligent Driving Industry

At the end of 2022, Nuro's two founders, Zhu Jiajun and Dave Ferguson, jointly issued an internal public letter. While explaining the problems the enterprise was facing at that time, the two founders also reflected on the aggressive expansion model from 2020 to 2021 (expanding from a scale of 700 people to over 1,500 people) and announced a lay - off plan of up to 30%.

In addition, although the "Nuro" logistics vehicle is relatively mature, facing the above - mentioned cost - benefit issues, it was also forced to announce a "suspension of the mass - production plan".

The usage scenarios set by Nuro for its products, but the reality is - there are plenty of challenges.

Throughout 2023, Nuro thoroughly reviewed its development strategy since its establishment from top to bottom and was determined to promote a fundamental transformation of its business direction. In 2024, the company announced a complete shift from the previous "self - building and operating vehicles" to "providing autonomous driving technology licensing". At the same time, it fully utilized the road - going data accumulated during the logistics vehicle era and the refined algorithm models to launch an autonomous driving system platform called Nuro Driver™. Nuro officially defines it as its "fourth - generation" product.

The business characteristics of Nuro Driver™ go against the previous "heavy" full - link closed - loop model from vehicle R & D to intelligent driving system development and even algorithm refinement. Instead, it adopts a model similar to that of domestic intelligent driving suppliers