Qraft Technologies plans to use the $146 million investment to fuel U.S. and China expansion.

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).

SoftBank, the giant telecom company, is venturing out into the world of robotics and transportation services. DealStreet Asia said that SoftBank is trying to transform itself into the'Berkshire Hathaway of the tech industry' with the recent launch of a $100 billion technology fund. First SoftBank bought Aldebaran, the maker of the Nao and Romeo robots, and redirected them to produce the Pepper robot which has been sold in the thousands to businesses as a guide, information source and order taker, then bigger partnerships with Foxconn and Alibaba to manufacture and market Pepper and other consumer products, and most recently to establishing the $100 billion technology fund. Recognizing that the telecom services market has matured, SoftBank is putting their money where they can to participate in the new worlds of robotics and transportation as a service. Didi, which already serves more than 400 million users across China, provides services including taxi hailing, private car-hailing, Hitch (social ride-sharing), DiDi Chauffeur, DiDi Bus, DiDi Test Drive, DiDi Car Rental and DiDi Enterprise Solutions to users in China via a smartphone application.

SoftBank, the giant telecom company, is venturing out into the world of robotics and transportation services. DealStreet Asia said that SoftBank is trying to transform itself into the'Berkshire Hathaway of the tech industry' with the recent launch of a $100 billion technology fund. First SoftBank bought Aldebaran, the maker of the Nao and Romeo robots, and redirected them to produce the Pepper robot which has been sold in the thousands to businesses as a guide, information source and order taker, then bigger partnerships with Foxconn and Alibaba to manufacture and market Pepper and other consumer products, and most recently to establishing the $100 billion technology fund. Recognizing that the telecom services market has matured, SoftBank is putting their money where they can to participate in the new worlds of robotics and transportation as a service. Didi, which already serves more than 400 million users across China, provides services including taxi hailing, private car-hailing, Hitch (social ride-sharing), DiDi Chauffeur, DiDi Bus, DiDi Test Drive, DiDi Car Rental and DiDi Enterprise Solutions to users in China via a smartphone application.