Softbank Invests $1B in Robo-Delivery Startup Nuro

For the past two months, a pair of funny-looking, toaster-like creatures have been busily toting groceries from the Fry's Food supermarket to people's homes in Scottsdale, Arizona.Now, residents of the Phoenix suburb should get ready to see a lot more of these bots: Nuro, the self-driving startup that builds and operates the diminutive automatons, announced this morning it has received a $940 million investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund. The deal--the biggest investment in a self-driving company in recent months--continues SoftBank's steady march into the transportation industry: The Japanese giant has also invested in Uber, Mapbox, and parking "platform" ParkJockey. Last year, it put $2.25 billion into General Motor's self-driving arm, Cruise. Nuro, which is focused on local deliveries, makes a logical addition to SoftBank's roster. The Silicon Valley startup was founded in 2016 by Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu, both early and longtime members of Google's self-driving car effort (now a standalone Alphabet company known as Waymo).