Nuro Shifts Gears: From Autonomous Delivery to Licensing Self-Driving Tech

Nuro pivots to license self-driving tech to carmakers, mobility companies

Owning and operating a fleet of on-road bots has proved costly After multiple rounds of layoffs in 2022 and 2023, Nuro is pivoting its business strategy to focus more on the startup's core autonomous driving technology instead of owning and operating a fleet of low-speed, on-road delivery bots. The company said on Wednesday it would start licensing its autonomous vehicle technology to automakers and mobility providers, like ride-hail and delivery companies. Nuro had been a darling of the AV industry, raising over $2 billion from high-profile investors, but its previous business model had it burning cash fast. As the company's founders said at the time of last year's layoffs, the race to commercial delivery deployments comes at a cost, and by focusing on developing the AI, Nuro would be able to extend its runway from 1.5 years to 3.5 years until the unit economics make sense. Nuro said it will now pursue two parallel go-to-market strategies: The first is similar to Nuro's original offering -- it will offer a full Level 4 autonomous driving product, including the AV software and hardware, to goods delivery and passenger mobility services. The only difference is that Nuro will no longer build the cute delivery vehicles that the company is known for. It had paused its partnership with Chinese EV-maker BYD to manufacture its third-generation R3 delivery bot last year. The second strategy involves working with OEMs and their parts and services suppliers to build automated driving products for consumer vehicles that will range from Level 2 through to Level 4 driving systems. The SAE defines Level 4 autonomy as a driving system that can drive itself without human intervention in certain circumstances. Level 2 and Level 3 are versions of advanced driving systems that can perform some automated driving tasks but still require the human driver to stay attentive and take over. "We believe that it's within reach to provide [L4] on personally owned vehicles, so the consumer use case of full L4 technology is what we're most excited about," Dave Ferguson, Nuro's co-founder and president, told TechCrunch. Ferguson told TechCrunch that Nuro still has plenty of runway to work with, and doesn't need to raise a new round to fund this business shift. Nuro has not signed any partnerships yet, but it does have existing relationships with Uber and Toyota through its investor Woven Capital, the venture arm of Toyota subsidiary, Woven Planet. Nuro isn't the only company to realize that deploying and operating self-driving vehicles is like throwing cash into fire and that it's more financially feasible to provide the driver-as-a-service. The startup will compete with others in the space like the U.K.'s Wayve, which recently announced a partnership with Uber and also sells its autonomous driving tech to OEMs; and Mobileye, which is working with automakers like Porsche to provide automated driving technology. Nuro's new business strategy comes a little over a month after the California Department of Motor Vehicles granted it approval to test its R3 bot in four Bay Area cities. The permit also allowed Nuro to test its tech at 45 miles per hour, up from 25 miles per hour. At the time, Ferguson told TechCrunch Nuro wasn't planning to deploy the R3, but would instead focus on developing and testing the autonomous tech. Nuro has been drip-feeding teasers about a new business strategy that goes beyond goods delivery for the past month. The startup last month announced a "road trip" across 53 U.S. metro areas to collect data to train its AI for urban, rural and highway driving. In late August, Nuro posted that its 4th generation Nuro Driver, powered by Nvidia's Drive Thor with Arm Neoverse tech, enables "L4 AI-first autonomous driving for multiple vehicle types." Nuro said that in four years, it has driven over 1 million autonomous miles on public roads - both with a safety driver behind the wheel and without - across Arizona, Texas and California as part of general testing and delivery partnerships with Uber Eats, Domino's and FedEx. Ferguson said that Nuro's autonomous driving software prioritizes safety through its AI architecture. The AV Driver generates every action through end-to-end foundational models, but a more traditional robotics system operates in parallel as a backup. The backup system validates every step the AI Driver makes in real time to ensure it's not violating any constraints, like the dynamic limits of the vehicle or road rules. "It's not a question of if, but when L4 autonomy will become widespread," said Jiajun Zhu, co-founder and CEO at Nuro, in a statement.

Ready to Roll: Nuro to License Its Autonomous Driving System

Built on the NVIDIA DRIVE and DriveOS safety architecture, Nuro Driver is poised to accelerate adoption of autonomous technology across the transportation industry. To accelerate autonomous vehicle development and deployment timelines, Nuro announced today it will license its Nuro Driver autonomous driving system directly to automakers and mobility providers. The Nuro Driver is built on NVIDIA's end-to-end safety architecture, which includes NVIDIA GPUs for AI training in the cloud and an automotive-grade NVIDIA DRIVE Thor computer running the NVIDIA DriveOS operating system inside the vehicle. The Nuro Driver has demonstrated its reliability and safety in real-world conditions with more than 1 million autonomous miles completed across its fleet of R&D vehicles and zero at-fault incidents. "It's not a question of if, but when L4 autonomy will become widespread," said Jiajun Zhu, cofounder and CEO at Nuro. "We believe Nuro is positioned to be a major contributor to this autonomous future where people and goods mobility are free-flowing, representing a significant increase in the quality of life for everyone." The licensing of the Nuro Driver marks a significant step forward in bringing level 4 vehicles to market, accelerating the adoption of autonomous technology across the transportation industry. Nuro announced at GTC in March that the Nuro Driver, which enables level 4 autonomous driving for multiple vehicle types, is being built on NVIDIA DRIVE Thor, running on the NVIDIA DriveOS operating system for safe, AI-defined autonomous vehicles. DRIVE Thor integrates the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture, designed for transformer, large language models and generative AI workloads. Nuro also uses NVIDIA GPUs for AI training. "Built with NVIDIA's end-to-end safety AV architecture, the Nuro Driver can integrate sensor processing and other safety-critical capabilities, along with AI-driven autonomy, into a single, centralized computing system," said Rishi Dhall, vice president of automotive at NVIDIA. "This enables the reliability and performance needed for safe deployment of autonomous vehicles at scale." The next-gen Nuro Driver will include safety features such as microphones for siren detection and systems for removing dirt from sensors as well as redundancy in safety-critical systems. Nuro's licensing model will offer automotive manufacturers and mobility companies access to a commercially independent, road-proven platform that can accelerate their autonomous vehicle development and deployment timelines. With a focus on advancing autonomy, Nuro is poised to help shape the future of transportation by driving industry-wide adoption and commercialization of autonomous technology across a broad range of vehicles and mobility applications. Nuro this summer received approval from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test its driverless vehicles based on the Nuro Driver in four San Francisco Bay Area cities: Los Altos, Menlo Park, Mountain View and Palo Alto. The DMV permit allows Nuro vehicles to travel at any time of the day, as well as in light rain and light to moderate fog conditions. Nuro is also conducting commercial testing and delivery services in Houston.