News Commentary | February 27, 2020
A former VP at Starsky claims that the company had a funding deal fall through, resulting in mass layoffs of engineers. With few details surrounding the report, it's unclear if the company's unconventional teleoperations approach to AVs had anything to do with the collapse. Regardless, the long‑haul... Not part of subscription
News Commentary | April 29, 2020
SoftBank and Legend Capital have reportedly contributed $150 million in outside funding to Didi's bike‑sharing unit Qingju, an addition to the reported $850 million of internal funding from Didi itself. The move and amount are surprising considering the rocky history of bike‑shares in China. However... To read more, click here.
News Commentary | November 09, 2020
This year is proving to be another big funding year for autonomous vehicles, which topped the leaderboard on our Foresight 2021 report. Chinese autonomous trucking company Inceptio raised $120 million, Pony.ai raised $267 million, and Nuro raised $500 million – all just in the past week. Of note, ... To read more, click here.
by Lewie Roberts
Magna joins a group of financial firms participating in Waymo's first external funding round, which serves as yet another reminder that AV development is wildly capital-intensive (similar to other nonsoftware projects from X like Makani). Last year saw similar billion-dollar investments (or more) into Uber ATG, Cruise, Argo AI, and Aptiv. Although there is high contrast between these massive investments and the slow progress of development, clients should remember that slow and expensive development was already expected. This announcement comes just after some small steps in shuttling riders without a safety driver, suggesting upward momentum with this investment rather than signaling any major equity trade-off.
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