Nuro designs and operates autonomous delivery vehicles built from the ground up to carry goods, not people. Founded by two former Waymo engineers, the company took a fundamentally different approach to self-driving technology — instead of retrofitting passenger cars, they built small, lightweight vehicles optimized exclusively for delivery.
Their third-generation vehicle features no steering wheel, no pedals, and no space for human occupants. It’s roughly half the width of a standard car and tops out at 45 mph. This smaller footprint means lower kinetic energy in any potential collision, making the safety calculus much more favorable than full-size autonomous cars. The design also allows for more cargo space relative to the vehicle’s size.
Nuro has partnered with major retailers including Walmart, Kroger, Domino’s, and FedEx for last-mile delivery operations. They received the first-ever exemption from the U.S. Department of Transportation to operate a vehicle without traditional manual controls on public roads. The company runs commercial delivery services in select markets across Texas and California.
The business model targets the massive local commerce and delivery market, which runs into hundreds of billions of dollars annually. By removing the human driver — the largest cost in delivery operations — Nuro aims to make autonomous delivery economically viable at scale. They’ve raised over $2 billion in funding and continue expanding their operational footprint while refining their autonomous driving stack for dense suburban environments.
