Autonomous vehicle startup Nuro says it has raised $940M from SoftBank's Vision Fund, valuing the company at $2.7B
(Reuters) - Autonomous technology startup Nuro said on Monday it raised $940 million from SoftBank Group Corp, which valued the Silicon Valley-based company at $2.7 billion.
Context & Ripple Effects
In February 2019, SoftBank's Vision Fund wrote Nuro the largest check of the startup's life — $940M at a $2.7B valuation — making the Silicon Valley delivery-robot company one of the fund's flagship autonomy bets. The round set the template for everything that followed: a $500M raise at $5B led by T. Rowe Price in late 2020, then a $600M Series D led by Tiger Global at $8.6B in 2021.
The arc since is a boom-and-reset case study. By April 2025 Nuro was raising a $106M Series E at $6B — below its 2021 peak — before closing the full $203M tranche with Uber and Nvidia joining, and by mid-2026 Uber had committed nearly $500M more as crucial runway while Nuro works to prove commercial scale.
First-order effects
- Nuro gains a war chest that lets it scale autonomous delivery hardware and operations without near-term revenue pressure, while SoftBank's Vision Fund takes a anchor position in last-mile autonomy at what proved to be the floor of Nuro's valuation curve.
Second-order effects
- The SoftBank validation pulls institutional money into the category — T. Rowe Price and Tiger Global follow within three years — but also sets expectations that later rounds cannot meet, forcing Nuro's 2025 Series E down to $6B and pushing it toward strategic investors like Uber and Nvidia instead of growth funds.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, autonomous delivery consolidates around corporate strategics rather than crossover funds: Uber's nearly-$500M commitment ties Nuro's survival to a customer relationship, a structure that favors vertically integrated players over independent AV startups chasing standalone valuations.
The trend: Autonomous delivery funding has moved from SoftBank-era mega-rounds and peak valuations toward strategic-customer capital, with Nuro's path from $2.7B to $8.6B and back to $6B tracing the sector's repricing.