Uber Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), the self-driving software division of US-based on-demand ride service Uber, is looking to raise $1bn round from investors including telecommunications conglomerate SoftBank, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.
Carmaker Toyota Motor and automotive parts supplier Denso are also set to take part in the round, which would value the autonomous vehicle unit at $7.25bn, and which is expected to be officially announced within days.
Uber operates a ride hailing platform with a presence in more than 700 cities around the world, and also oversees logistics subsidiary Uber Freight and food delivery service Uber Eats. It filed for an initial public offering last week that could potentially value it at $100bn.
The company has been pursuing autonomous driving technologies for years. Recently unsealed court documents in its legal battle with Waymo, the self-driving software subsidiary of internet technology conglomerate Alphabet, showed it was at one point spending $20m a month on those efforts.
Uber also acquired autonomous truck driving developer Otto in 2016, leading to the aforementioned trade secret theft lawsuit by Waymo, which was eventually settled in return for a 0.34% equity stake in Uber.
The same court documents also revealed Uber was at one point planning to have 75,000 autonomous vehicles on the road by this year, and to be operating driverless taxis across 13 cities by 2020.
However, the company suffered a serious setback when one of its self-driving vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona in March 2018. Uber halted its pilot program for nine months until resuming its tests in December.
Uber has raised about $11bn in equity funding since it was founded in 2009. SoftBank’s Vision Fund led a $1.25bn round for the company in late 2017 as part of a consortium that acquired $7.2bn in secondary shares at the same time.
Toyota injected an undisclosed sum in Uber’s main business in 2016 before putting in another $500m as part of the same collaboration agreement, in August 2018.
Uber’s corporate investors also include Chinese peer Didi Chuxing and GV, a corporate venturing subsidiary of Alphabet, as well as internet company Baidu, software producer Microsoft and Times Internet, the online services subsidiary of media group Bennett, Coleman & Co.
