Woven Capital, L.P., an investment wing of Toyota, has made its first investment into Nuro Inc., a self-driving shuttle startup.
Previously, Nuro raised $500 million in funding to expand its autonomous goods delivery service using self-driving shuttles that include no seats or cockpit for drivers.
The investment is part of Nuro’s Series c round of funding, advancing the work in designing and engineering self-driving road vehicles to transform local commerce through autonomous delivery. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.
Woven Capital was funded in January 2021 as the investment arm of Woven Planet Group, part of Toyota subsidiaries, which started the business. The company plans to back companies that develop innovative technologies such as mobility, automation, artificial intelligence, data and analytics, connectivity and smart cities.
Nuro was very active in 2020 with an agreement with CVS to use its R2 autonomous delivery vans to bring prescriptions and other essentials across three zip codes in Houston, Texas. Nuro was also one of the first company’s to get approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for a regulator exemption to use the vehicles without any safety driver.
