Starship Technologies, the UK-based operator of an autonomous vehicle-based delivery service backed by car manufacturer Daimler, raised an additional $25m in seed funding on Thursday to bring the total to $42.2m.
The additional capital was provided by Matrix Partners, Morpheus Ventures and assorted angel investors. It follows an initial $17.2m tranche led by Daimler, with commitments from Matrix, Morpheus, Shasta Ventures, ZX Ventures, Grishin Robotics, Playfair Capital and Hof Capital.
Founded in 2014, Starship Technologies runs a delivery service that uses small unmanned vehicles to send packages over a two-to-three-mile radius in 15 to 30 minutes. The robots have now covered more than 100,000 miles across 100 cities in 20 countries.
The additional capital will go towards a deployment at scale across neighbourhoods and corporate and university campuses in the US and Europe.
The money was announced alongside the appointment of Lex Bayer, a former executive with home rental platform Airbnb, as chief executive of Starship Technologies.
– Image courtesy of Starship Technologies