Early last year, LinkedIn co-founder and prolific venture capital investor Reid Hoffman called Chris Urmson the Henry Ford of autonomous vehicles (AV).
The vote of confidence andbig check from Hoffman, coupled with a team of deeply knowledgable AV entrepreneurs, has catapulted his company, Aurora Innovation, squarely into unicorn territory.Aurora, the developer of a full-stack self-driving software system for automobilemanufacturers, is raising at least $500 million in equity funding at more than a $2 billion valuation in a round expected to be led by new investor Sequoia Capital, according to a Recode report.
A $500 million financing would bring Auroras total raised to date to $596 million and would provide a 4x increase to its most recent valuation.The company, founded in 2016, raised a $90 million Series A last February from Hoffmans Greylock Partners and Index Ventures .
Hoffman and Index general partner Mike Volpi joined Auroras board as part of the deal.
Greylock and Index are Auroras only existing investors, per PitchBook data.
The young business has a lean cap table often characteristic of startups led by experienced entrepreneurs able to secure financing deals briskly from top VCs.Auroras C-suite is chock-full of veteran AV workers.
Urmson, for his part, formerly headed up the self-driving vehicles program at Google, now known as Waymo.
Chief technology officer Drew Bagnell was head of perception and autonomy at Uber andSterling Anderson, Auroras chief product officer, directed the autopilot program at Tesla from 2015 to 2016.Between these three co-founders, they have been thinking and working collectively in robotics, automation automotive products for over 40 years, Hoffman wrote in a blog post announcing Auroras Series A funding.In addition to the high-caliber of the founding team, Auroras collaborative approach to building self-driving cars has attracted investors, too.
The company has partnered with a number of automotiveretailers to integrate its technology into their vehicles and make self-driving cars a practical reality.
Currently, Aurora countsVolkswagen, Hyundai and Chinese manufacturer Byton as partners.2018 was a banner year for VC investment in U.S.
autonomous vehicle startups.
In total, investors poured $1.6 billion across 58 deals, nearly doubling 2017s high of $893 million.
Around the world, AV startups secured $3.41 billion, on par with the $3.48 billion invested in 2017, per PitchBook.Though we are just days into 2019,LiDAR technology developerAEye has completed a previously announced $40 million Series B.
ThePleasanton, Calif.-headquartered company raised the funds from Taiwania Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Intel Capital, Airbus Ventures and Tychee Partners.
And last week, Sydney-based Baraja, another LiDAR startup, brought in a $32 million Series A from Sequoia China, Main Sequence Ventures CSIRO Innovation Fund and Blackbird Ventures.