Hyundai and Kia join in Aurora's $600 million Series B funding round
The automaker has been working with Aurora since early 2018.
The last couple weeks have held many developments for Aurora , the self-driving startup helmed by a former Google employee, and the tail end of this week brings yet another.
Aurora announced this week that Hyundai and Kia have invested in Aurora as part of its Series B financing. This round has produced more than $600 million in financing for the company, which intends to develop and sell a self-driving-car platform that automakers can purchase and integrate into their own vehicles. Hyundai and Aurora are not exactly strange bedfellows, as the two have been working together since at least 2018.
While we haven't seen much of what's been happening between Aurora and Hyundai, the announcement included a picture of the hydrogen fuel-cell Hyundai Nexo wearing the Aurora Driver hardware platform. The picture is small, but we can definitely see a lidar emitter up top, and there are likely other sensors and arrays in the mix, too.
Aurora's Series B funding will be used, as one might expect, to further development of the Aurora Driver platform. But, it will also be allocated toward expanding Aurora's team and further scooping up technologies from others. In late May, Aurora announced that it was buying up Blackmore for its lidar technology, a key component in most AV development suites.
This has been a busy week for Aurora. On Monday, the startup announced that it had inked a deal with Fiat Chrysler, which will see Aurora Driver being integrated into future commercial vehicles. On Tuesday, reports claimed that Aurora and Volkswagen have gone their separate ways, as VW will likely invest in Ford's Argo AI as part of a deepening relationship between the two automakers.
