Dave Ferguson, the Kiwi founder of US self-driving car startup called Nuro, pictured during a September 2022 visit to the Herald's office in Auckland. Photo / Dean Purcell.
Nuro, a US maker of self-driving car technology founded by New Zealander Dave Ferguson, has raised US$203 million ($346m) in a funding round supported by Uber, plus the world’s most valuable company: AI chip maker Nvidia. NZ’s Icehouse Ventures also chipped in $5m.
“It only took us raising $200 million to get Robbie’s attention. But never mind - better late than never. We’re very excited,” Fergusson said as he made an appearance by Zoom at the Showcase event in Auckland last night, in a good-natured jibe at Icehouse Ventures’ CEO Robbie Paul.
Ferguson told the audience that self-driving cars would change the way we live.
“Your kids, I’m guessing, will still get licences, but probably in the five to 10 years after they’ve gotten their licences very few people are going to be driving anymore.”
The money was raised at a US$6 billion ($10.2b) valuation - a staggering sum but actually a third less than the time of Nuro’s last venture capital raise three years ago, at the height of the pandemic, low-interest rate venture capital bubble.
The deal, announced by the companies overnight, is part of a wider scheme that last month saw Uber order 20,000 vehicles from US EV start-up Lucid as part of Uber’s putative push into self-driving robotaxis.
The Lucid cars will self-drive using the AI software platform developed by Nuro.
Nuro honed its self-driving tech during a pilot programme that saw it develop autonomous delivery vehicles for Domino’s and grocery and pharmacy chain Kroger over 2021 and 2022 in Houston (see video above).
But it has now supplied the self-driving smarts for Lucid’s prototype robotaxi, being tested on closed roads in Las Vegas in collaboration with Uber.
In a company video, Ferguson says Nuro took a stock-standard Lucid Gravity EV, then added its self-driving hardware and software in just five weeks.
His firm plans to provide its autonomous driving technology to multiple car makers.
“Uber will have self-driving vehicles in the next five to ten years,” Ferguson told the Showcase audience.
“They’ll have them in New Zealand, but there will still be personally-owned vehicles, too.
“I think where we’re going to see the biggest societal transformation probably on a 10-year timeframe.
“Those personally owned vehicles are going to transition to be fully autonomous.”
Ferguson said NZ’s laws and regulations around autonomous vehicles were “very reasonable” (not withstanding that New Zealand is yet to allow Tesla’s full-self drive).
Ferguson never set out to be the next Elon Musk.
He arrived at Otago University in 1997 with plans to complete an LLB, he told the Herald during a visit to Auckland in September 2022, during a post-lockdown visit to accept a Kea World Class Award
Said snowballing led to a PhD in Robotics and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in the US. “It was like a Disney World of robotics, it was and still is, and I just was totally hooked,” Ferguson says.
“I participated in a bunch of different robot applications, including a big competition called the Darpa Urban Challenge, where we had robots racing each other in a mock urban environment. And from that point, I really became very, very excited about self-driving vehicles in particular.”
(Darpa is the US Government’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, which supports R&D across a broad spectrum of startups. It provided key funding during Rocket Lab’s early stages.)
Ferguson went on to join Google’s self-driving car project - today known as Waymo - as a principal engineer and machine-learning lead before leaving in 2016 to co-found Nuro with Zhu (also a principal engineer on Google’s driverless car project).
The pair’s first-generation driverless car was a modified Prius. Now, with their third-gen model, they designed their own vehicle from scratch.
“We use both short and long-range cameras - similar to the eyes we have - and lidar [laser imaging, detection and ranging] to shoot lasers and create a 3D point cloud of the whole environment. We also use radar to get distance and velocity measurements for other vehicles,” Ferguson told the Herald in 2022.
Thermal cameras are also in the mix, used to detect the heat signature of people and animals - particularly at night.
“And we also have microphones for emergency vehicles or siren detection,” Ferguson says.
The plethora of complementary sensors adds up to a system that can maintain a detailed virtual map of the Nuro-controlled vehicle’s world at all times.
“That Icehouse Ventures is investing in Nuro alongside the world’s most valuable company and Uber is thanks especially to Kea and Sir Stephen Tindall,” Paul told the Herald.
Kea is an international network of Kiwi businesspeople and entrepreneurs.
“There are so many remarkable Kiwis offshore but I was speechless when I discovered a Kiwi was at the helm of one of the most prominent autonomous vehicle companies,” Paul said.
“We first met Dave when Kea brought him back for the World Class Awards in 2022. Dave then joined us for our No Barriers Founder Retreat in 2024 at the invitation of [Allbirds founder] Tim Brown.
“I was attending a “Friends of New Zealand” Dinner at Stanford hosted by John Breckenridge last month that was attended by Dave. He mentioned our investment in Substack and that led to the revelation that there was a second close (led by Uber and Nvidia!) that would could take part in.
“From Nuro to Substack, we’re seeing more and more pioneering New Zealand business people leading in all manner of industries. For Icehouse Ventures investing in the likes of Nuro, it’s a chance for our local investors to contribute to and benefit from the best of Kiwi success abroad.”
Ferguson is one of several ex-pat Kiwis who’ve made a splash on the international AI scene.
Others include Paul Copplestone, whose US-based start-up Supabase - whose technology helps with “vibe coding” recently raised US$200m, Nic Lane, whose UK-based start-up Flower helps AI makers train their software, Alex Kendall, cofounder of another self-driving tech firm, UK-based Wayve, which last year raised US$1.05b in a round backed by Microsoft and Nvidia and OpenAI secret project head Ben Goodger.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.