DEPLOYDatabase

Company

Nuro

avnuro.jp

Mountain View, CA-based autonomous vehicle company founded in 2016 by Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson (both ex-Google self-driving car project).

Track Nuro
Founded
2016
HQ
Mountain View, CA
Status
Private
Regulatory status5 Regulatory filing1 FAA action

Nuro holds 5 Regulatory filing and 1 FAA action, per the DEPLOY registry.

See all 6 filings

CategoryRobotaxis

Funding

$2.3B

Models

3

Deployments

26

Employees

700

Patents

12

Overview

Mountain View, CA-based autonomous vehicle company founded in 2016 by Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson (both ex-Google self-driving car project). Nuro developed custom autonomous delivery vehicles (R2, R3) and became the first company to receive an NHTSA exemption for a vehicle without human controls. Raised approximately .13B in total funding including 00M Series D. Recently pivoted to licensing autonomy technology, raising 06M for that initiative.

Reality check

Production validation (company-claimed)

Began in summer 2026: vehicles are built at Lucid's Arizona plant with rider light bars, cabin monitoring and remote-assist buttons.

Safety record (company-claimed)

Nuro says it has driven more than 2 million autonomous miles with zero at-fault incidents over 6+ years of L4 driving on public roads.

Verified record

Verified deployments
26 deployments on file
Active incidents
8 incidents on file

Valuation of record

DEPLOY VERIFIED
$6Bas of Aug 2025

Priced roundSeries E post-money

See the full valuations ranking →

Key facts

Valuation (Aug 2025)

The Series E valued Nuro at about $6B; it has raised about $2.34B over seven rounds.

Business model

Since 2024 Nuro licenses its Nuro Driver autonomy platform instead of running its own delivery fleet.

Autonomy products

Nuro Driver Assist (L2++) and Nuro Driver (L4).

Uber and Lucid robotaxi program

Nuro supplies L4 autonomy, Lucid the Gravity vehicles and Uber the network, for at least 35,000 Lucid vehicles over six years.

Launch markets

San Francisco Bay Area first in late 2026, then Houston in mid-2027 from a 50,000 sq ft Uber depot.

Permits

California driverless testing for Lucid Gravity in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, plus a CPUC pilot permit for passengers with a safety driver. No paid rides yet.

Test rides (Apr 2026)

Uber employees began safety-driver test rides; the engineering fleet is nearly 100 vehicles in California and Texas.

Delivery heritage

R2 and R3 delivery vehicles, with past partners Kroger, Walmart and Domino's.

Backerssee investors →

NVIDIA, Uber, Baillie Gifford, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Tiger Global and Greylock.

Facilities

A $40M manufacturing facility and test track in Nevada, plus a closed-course test site in Las Vegas.

Phoenix exit

Closed its Phoenix depot in October 2022 and continued in Tempe.

Data & sources

Press releases

6

News coverage

3

Government records

1

Patent documents

12

Web sources

16

38 sources backing this record.View all →

Models (3)

View all models →

Previous platform

Nuro Autonomous Prius

Nuro's first-generation autonomous vehicle: a retrofitted Toyota Prius used for early on-road testing and the December 2021 Mountain View supervised delivery pilot (7-Eleven; first autonomous delivery service in California). Superseded by Nuro's purpose-built R-series delivery pods.

avView model →

Retired

Nuro R3

Nuro's third-generation electric autonomous delivery vehicle, unveiled in January 2022 at CES. The R3 was the first delivery AV equipped with an external front airbag for pedestrian and cyclist protection, and expanded payload capacity to 500 lbs across heated and cooled compartments. Nuro exited consumer fleet operations in September 2024, pivoting to licensing its autonomous driving stack (marketed as 'Nuro Driver') to automakers and mobility-as-a-service providers; the R3 vehicle program was effectively shelved at that time.

avView model →

Current platform

Nuro R2

Second-generation Nuro autonomous road vehicle. Low-speed automotive form factor, goods-only (no passenger compartment). Deployed in Houston, Mountain View, and Scottsdale. Classified as `av` form factor; regulatory regime is road-vehicle, not sidewalk. Nuro pivoted from first-party delivery to AV technology licensing (the Nuro Driver). Current R2 operations in Mountain View and Houston are Nuro's own R&D fleet validating the Nuro Driver, not customer deployments; the model is classified research to reflect this post-pivot state.

avView model →

Partnerships

Every company Nuro has built with, alongside the ones only announced in a press release.

7 total3 operating4 just announced1 ended

Most-frequent partners

  1. 1Uber3× joint35 total
  2. 2Lucid Motors2× joint4 total
  3. 3Uber2× joint
  4. 4BYD Company Limited1× joint1 total
  5. 5FedEx Corporation1× joint6 total
  6. 6Lucid Motors1× joint

Most recent

  1. Uber x Lucid x Nuro2026-07-28
    with Uberjust announced
  2. Nuro x Uber x Lucid Robotaxi2026-06-17
    with Uberjust announced
  3. Lucid Motors x Nuro x Uber Robotaxi2026-02-15
    with Lucid Motorsjust announced
  4. Uber x Nuro x NVIDIA x Lucid robotaxi program2025-10-31
    with Uberoperating
  5. Lucid x Nuro x Uber Robotaxi2025-07-17
    with Lucid Motorsoperating

Nuro on the deployment map

View the global map

26 verified deployments across 7 regions, newest verified May 2026. Explore where Nuro's robots are operating, by place and type.

Free to use on your site, with a link back to DEPLOY.

View the full Nuro deployment record →

Free to use on your site, with a link back to DEPLOY.

Relationships

UUberTechnology partnerNNVIDIATechnology partnerLLucid MotorsManufacturerUUberDeployerBBYD Company LimitedCo-developerUUberDistributorFFedEx CorporationDeployerNNVentures (NVIDIA)InvestorBBaillie GiffordInvestorUUberInvestor

Claims ledger

Public, dated claims by Nuro, each tracked against the evidence. Status is a DEPLOY assessment from primary sources: verified means an independent source confirms it; contradicted means one refutes it; open means the outcome is not yet determinable. Every entry keeps its verbatim quote and source so you can check the call yourself.

Claim Integrity: 67% (2 of 3 resolved claims verified; 3 tracked)
  • VerifiedSafety · claimed 2026-01-01
    “The Nuro Driver is validated with 5+ years of driverless deployments and over 1.7M autonomous miles with zero at-fault incidents”

    Correction: this verdict was recorded with the claim date as its effective date. DEPLOY recorded it on 2026-07-09, which is its effective date.

    claim sourcestatus evidencecite this claim
  • VerifiedCapability · claimed 2024-12-04
    “Expanding L4 driverless capabilities using zero-occupant vehicles, powered by the AI-enabled Nuro Driver system”

    Correction: this verdict was recorded with the claim date as its effective date. DEPLOY recorded it on 2026-07-09, which is its effective date.

    claim sourcecite this claim
  • ContradictedCapacity · claimed 2020-01-01 · deadline 2024-12-31
    “Nuro will launch its service with a fleet of autonomous Prius vehicles, followed by up to 5,000 low-speed electric delivery vehicles without human controls”

    Nuro never deployed 5,000 delivery vehicles. Pivoted to a B2B model licensing autonomous tech to automotive OEMs.

    claim sourcestatus evidencecite this claim

Disagree with a status? Nuro can submit a correction with evidence and we log the response on the record. Methodology and the full industry ledger live at /stats/claim-integrity.

Explainers

Plain-language answers to the questions people ask about Nuro, from DEPLOY’s explainer library. Each is written in the language of the question and cross-checked against this registry.

What is the Nuro R2?
The Nuro R2 is the second-generation Nuro autonomous road vehicle: a low-speed, goods-only delivery vehicle with no passenger compartment. DEPLOY classifies it as an AV under road-vehicle rules, not a passenger robotaxi, and records it at research maturity after Nuro's pivot to licensing its Nuro Driver.Read the full explainer →
Is the Nuro R2 autonomous?
Yes. The R2's drive mode is recorded as autonomous, it carries goods only (no human passenger or safety-driver seat), and Nuro has operated it fully driverless in three cities. The caveat: current R2 operations are Nuro's own R&D fleet validating the Nuro Driver at research maturity, not commercial customer service.Read the full explainer →
Which sidewalk delivery robot is most deployed?
The Starship Bot from Starship Technologies, with 10M+ lifetime autonomous deliveries by April 2026 and a several-thousand-unit fleet across US, UK, Estonia, Germany, and Finland campuses. No competitor is within an order of magnitude.Read the full explainer →
What is the cheapest sidewalk delivery robot for a commercial operator?
No sidewalk delivery robot is sold to commercial operators in 2026: all run captive Robots-as-a-Service. Starship is cheapest by inferred build cost ($3K-$7K per unit, per an Oct 2025 Guardian profile) and by scale (3,000+ robots, 10M+ deliveries).Read the full explainer →

Current leadership (3)

ArrivalsDave Ferguson from Waymo, Jiajun Zhu from Waymo

DeparturesDave Ferguson to Waymo, Jiajun Zhu to Waymo

Founders (2)

See all founders across the registry →

Former / Previously (1)

  • Jack Yang Senior Software Engineer, Mapping & Localizationsecondary-verified

Safety record

8 incidents on record (1 moderate, 7 minor). Most recent: Jul 2026.

moderate
1
minor
7
collision
7
regulatory action
1

Most recent: Jul 2026

Only active incidents are counted. Retracted incidents are excluded from this summary but remain reachable at their canonical URLs.

Full safety record: incidents, sourcing, and exposure data →

Incidents affecting Nuro (8)

Includes incidents linked directly to this company, to its models, or to deployments of its models or under its operation. Retracted incidents are excluded from this view but remain reachable at their canonical URLs.

Operator customers (2)

Brains developed (1)

Recent coverage

Nuro in third-party press

Lucid’s 25,000 Bolt robotaxis will run on Nvidia’s self-driving software

Oct 21, 2026

TechCrunch Mobility: The custom chip driving Waymo’s robotaxi ambitions

Aug 23, 2026

US government lab is probing Chinese lidar for security vulnerabilities

Aug 21, 2026

Peers

94 peers across 3 segments. Every Nuro competitor derived from shared form-factor and application-domain edges.

av(88)

57 companies in this segment · highly_concentrated (HHI 4969.122215850638) · leader Waymo at 6990%

last mile delivery(4)

autonomous vehicle(2)

  • Gatikdirect competitor(reported)
    strong
  • Kodiak AIadjacent competitor(reported)
    moderate

Mentioned on (47)

Registry pages whose text names Nuro.