Over the last few years, Amazon has been quietly building its last-mile logistics delivery business — creating its own delivery service to compete with UPS and the USPS as well as exploring new ways to deliver packages to consumers in the form of drones.
Autonomous driving can now be added to Amazon’s portfolio of technology that it is exploring for the future of delivery after the company invested in Aurora, a start-up building technology to make future automobiles self-driving.
Aurora just completed its Series B round of financing, raising more than $530 million led by Sequoia and Amazon. Lightspeed Venture Partners, Geodesic, Shell Ventures and Reinvent Capital also participated in the funding round.
Aurora said it is developing self-driving technology called Aurora Driver, which conditions and distributes its own power, coordinates and synchronizes its own sensors and communicates with the vehicle over one umbilical.
The new funding will accelerate the development of Aurora Driver and increase its workforce, the company said.
