Starship Technologies, a San Francisco-based company that makes autonomous delivery robots, has acquired €50 million in a quasi-equity facility deal from the European Investment Bank (EIB), the EU’s lending arm.
The funds will be utilized for research and development, as well as the production of thousands more robots at Starship’s Tallinn engineering and innovation center.
The EIB’s support, according to Alastair Westgarth, CEO of Starship Technologies, will allow the company to continue to change last-mile transportation and provide the benefits of on-demand delivery and convenience to more people. “As the market leader in autonomous delivery, we are always searching for innovative methods to improve our service,” he said. Another crucial component in making this possible will be the increased engineering resources we will acquire in Europe.”
“Electric vehicles in all shapes and sizes will be part of our future, and can be a key part in the sustainable transportation puzzle,” said Thomas stros, Vice President, EIB. “Starship’s delivery robots are already proving their worth, and we are glad to support the company so that they can continue to develop their technology and scale-up their production,” he added.
Starship currently provides services in cities, university campuses, and industrial sites across the EU, the UK, and the US, with more development anticipated in the near future. It can make L4 delivery across the board, including entire cities and campuses.
Since 2018, the robots have started working at L4. Daily Starship robots will make multiple deliveries in a succession, including traffic crossings, completely independently. This is why the cost of a Starship delivery is now less than the cost of a human delivery, which is thought to be a world-first for any robot delivery company, although the majority of others are still mostly human-controlled and in pilot mode.
Image Credit: Starship Technologies
News Source: Tech.eu
