SoftBank fund invests big in self-driving deliveries

A SILICON Valley start-up working on self-driving delivery vehicles on Monday announced nearly a billion dollars in fresh funding from the SoftBank Vision Fund. The $940 million in financing from SoftBank brought the total amount of funding raised by Nuro to more than $1 billion, with investors including Greylock Partners and Gaorong Capital, according to the company. The move comes amid surging interest in robotic delivery from a range of companies from small start-ups to retail giant Amazon. “We’ve spent the last two and a half years building an amazing team, launching our first unmanned service, working with incredible partners and creating technology to fundamentally improve our daily lives,” Nuro co-founder Dave Ferguson said in a release. “This partnership gives us the opportunity to take the next step in realising our vision for local commerce and the broad application of our technology.”