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SoftBank’s next bet: $940M into autonomous delivery startup Nuro

82 点作者 samaysharma超过 6 年前

16 条评论

aresant超过 6 年前
I had a really interesting meeting with a huge institutional investor last week ($50b+ balance sheet) that has a ~$2b allocation to VC.<p>They said that softbank has almost had a &quot;chilling effect&quot; on their VC group - especially around investments that are truly capital intensive.<p>Their strategy has shifted away from Series A and towards Series B &#x2F; C where they can either co-invest with SoftBank, or if wait and see where Softbank invests before they pick a horse in a category they like so they at least have that info in as part of their investment calculus.<p>EDITED last paragraph for clarity
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lettergram超过 6 年前
I feel like when ever you need to put that much money into an idea, it’s likely not an effecient use of money.<p>For instance, if you invest in 200 startups at $5m each, you’re more likely to get better returns, than betting almost $1b on a single company. There’s higher risk with the one company (probably).<p>Further, and to the point on efficiency. There is diminishing returns to the effectiveness of investment, in most cases. You can get to MVP for most companies with very little, if any capital. Then the product in most cases should sell itself (needing less investment).<p>At $1b you’re either artificially propping the market, blundering around for an idea, or have a high capital intensive industry like building rockets or railroad tracks.<p>I understand they may be building autonomous vehicles, but certainly the winner of that race is going to Win using technology, not manufacturing the vehicle. Perhaps I’m wrong, idk.
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Animats超过 6 年前
Softbank again? They&#x27;ve become the world&#x27;s largest source of dumb money.<p>There&#x27;s a bunch of these things. Starship Technologies has a little stroller-sized vehicle that&#x27;s occasionally seen driving on Redwood City sidewalks. Nuro&#x27;s is sub-car sized and can operate on roads. Slowly. It can&#x27;t unload itself, so the customer has to go to it.<p>Remember Amazon Prime Air, drone delivery from five years ago? What happened with that?
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dawhizkid超过 6 年前
Surprised how critical comments are...IMO autonomous delivery vehicles are much more likely to go to market sooner than autonomous taxis for the simple reason that the barriers to getting regulatory approval are going to be much lower because you aren&#x27;t dealing with human lives. At the same time, food, grocery, and same day delivery are becoming more popular.
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samcday超过 6 年前
&gt; “We’ve spent the last two and a half years building an amazing team, launching our first unmanned service, working with incredible partners and creating technology to fundamentally improve our daily lives,” Nuro co-founder Dave Ferguson said in a statement.<p>Is anyone else getting really tired of hearing this kind of rhetoric? This is a company that, if successful in its mission, is going to help eliminate a whole bunch of jobs (delivery drivers, auxiliary grocery chain workers, etc). Yes, it&#x27;s gonna provide a cool upside - I can have robots deliver my toilet paper to me without having to leave the comfort of my home! But do we really need to describe that as &quot;fundamentally improving our daily lives&quot;?
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dmode超过 6 年前
I believe another self driving car company, Aurora, also raised $500mn recently [1] I don&#x27;t really understand how these companies are attracting these massive sums, given that even a company like Google has made limited progress in 10 years after investing several billions. On top of that there are heavy weight car manufacturers like VW and BMW who are also investing in this technology.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;07&#x2F;amazon-sequoia-invest-in-self-driving-car-startup-aurora&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;07&#x2F;amazon-sequoia-invest-in-s...</a>
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dmix超过 6 年前
Looks like both of the founders were team leads at Waymo:<p>&gt; I am one of the founding team members of the Google self-driving car project.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;jiajun&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;jiajun&#x2F;</a><p>&gt; I built and then led the computer vision, machine learning, behavior prediction, and scene understanding teams for Google&#x27;s self-driving car project.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;dave-ferguson-565b974&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;dave-ferguson-565b974&#x2F;</a>
neosat超过 6 年前
It&#x27;s important to realize that Softbank&#x27;s strategy may not be just to look at the startup&#x27;s chances in isolation but looking at the whole portfolio of companies in a space (self-driving vehicles) and look at a range of capabilities there. With their investments and their people on the boards of these companies, they can &#x27;do more&#x27; to accelerate and make things happen which may not otherwise happen. So their view includes both the individual company, but also how it fits into the entire picture and that may give them an additional perspective and consequently a different notion of value than you or me as individual investors or analyzers would have.
oldgradstudent超过 6 年前
How come every report on their &quot;unmanned&quot; delivery service fails to mention that there is a chase car following their vehicle and (visible in some some videos) a car driving in front of their vehicle?
aezell超过 6 年前
No one wants to talk about where all of Softbank&#x27;s money comes from?
TomK32超过 6 年前
Put enough money into those startups and they can lobby to ban human drivers and make AI drivers mandatory. That would solve so many problems!
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momentmaker超过 6 年前
How does one get the grocery?<p>I&#x27;m assuming you&#x27;d have to be home in order get them and there would be an app that tells you an estimated delivery time and location of the vehicle.
Liquix超过 6 年前
I&#x27;d be curious to learn how companies in this space are planning to address the potential issue of physical robberies&#x2F;hijackers&#x2F;bad actors.
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Judgmentality超过 6 年前
Does this mean Softbank has lost confidence in their previous investment, Cruise?
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leowoo91超过 6 年前
But are there regulation in place for such vehicles?
sonnyblarney超过 6 年前
So probably a 5-10B valuation - without a viable product, a customer, or a dime in revenue.<p>It&#x27;s one thing for FB to buy a massive social network for billions: they can effectively calculate how much it&#x27;s worth because they know how it would monetize.<p>But this is getting bonkers because there are so, so many things that can go wrong. Do consumers give a rats if their groceries are delivered by a person or by a robot? Will they respond well to the fact they have to walk outside? How do they deliver to apartments? Regulations? Safety? Theft? Service costs? Operational performance? And all of this assumes the &#x27;self driving&#x27; part just &#x27;works&#x27;.<p>I get the market is &#x27;monstrous&#x27; ... but this is a lot of money one would expect when all of the above is taken care of.
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