One of the bigger players in the world of self-drive delivery vehicles has raised another round of funding just 30 days after it was last. The company, founded and developed in Estonia but based in San Francisco, has raised over $100 million in the last month after the European Investment Bank put $50 million into it.
The Series B is co-led by NordicNinja, the Japanese-Nordic VC firm, and Taavet+Sten, the investment firm run by the Wise founders. The audio and electronics giant and the tire maker also participated.
The previous financing led by the EIB came in the form of a quasi-equity facility, meaning it had elements both of equity and potentially loans or convertible notes as part of the sum. The company has raised $202 million, but is not revealing its valuation at this time.
When it raised a Series A of $47 million, PitchBook estimated a modest $110 million valuation. The company says that it has the world's largest fleet of autonomously delivered goods. The fleet is very close to being fully self-sufficient.
The company tells me that the Series B will be used to expand its current footprint and to invest in some new initiatives.
Over 3 million deliveries have been completed by it. Its partners include physical grocery stores such as Co-op and Budgens in the UK and Savemart in California, as well as college campuses such as North Carolina A&T and South Dakota State University.
The plan is to double down on more markets and explore new forms of business, but also invest in exploring a wider range of business models.
There is more to be done. Ahti Heinla, the chief technology officer who co-founded Starship with Janus Friis, said in an interview that they are still in a grand scheme of things.
One idea that the company is working on in its R&D labs is a robot that will travel not just on the sidewalk, but also the road, which will bring it into the realm of working on.
I wouldn't be surprised if we did something like that in the future, as the sidewalk strategy is still a good choice for most deliveries out there.
The other area where it will likely do more is in broadening its services. Currently, Starship works with its partners to sell products via its own app, but the company is looking at how it might provide a more embedded experience to be purchased and used via partners apps. This would be a big point for retailers like Tesco, which have banked a lot of their digital growth on native experiences that they can better control.
The models under which its robots are used are the same. The primary branding for the fleet is Starship, which can be used for multiple partners depending on the time of day and changing consumer demands. Longer term, there could be a scenario where these are either sold or leased for sole use by some customers, much how trucks or planes are bought in.
The focus is likely to be on food.
Hein said that the food in its multitude of forms is the majority of their business.
The company has yet to launch in San Francisco due to a clash that Marble had with regulators. Amazon and delivery companies have not rolled out anything large enough across their footprints to compete with it. It would present a big competitive force for Starship if they did that.
"Everyone is talking about how to fix the issues with last mile delivery," said Shinichi Nikkuni, Managing Partner of NordicNinja VC in a statement. There aren't many companies that have a service that is truly self-sufficient. We think that Starship has found the right formula for success on a global scale and are excited to be a part of their future journey.
We have always been committed backers of the engineering ingenuity budding from the Estonian tech scene, and Starship takes this literally further than anyone: to the millions of miles around the planet these robots have already covered. As they have passed the crucial milestone making robot delivery more cost effective than human equivalents, there are hundreds of millions more.
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