Optimus Ride, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) spinout working on driverless vehicle technology, has attracted $5.25m in seed funding from investors including graphics chip producer Nvidia, TechCrunch reported yesterday.
The round was co-led by venture capital firms NextView Ventures and FirstMark Capital, and included Joi Ito, a director at MIT Media Lab, as well as Greycroft Partners, Morado Venture Partners, Haystack and UJ Ventures.
Optimus Ride is still operating in stealth mode and has not revealed details about its technology, though it is expected to disclose more in the coming months.
The startup conducted the first tests of its platform at Perkins School for the Blind last month, suggesting it may be taking a slightly different approach to driverless technology than competitors.
Sertac Karaman, co-founder, president and chief scientist of Optimus Ride, said: “We have been working on new transportation systems that are based on new self-driving vehicle technologies, and we have been working on this for a few months already.
“We have people on the team who have been working on autonomous vehicles for almost a decade. We have come together to build self-driving vehicles, or systems that are based on level 4 autonomy, and to carry that to the next transportation system.”
– A version of this article originally appeared on our sister site, Global University Venturing.