Dead AI self-driving products.
$16.3B of capital across this category
Autonomous vehicle startups. The category that raised more capital and produced fewer surviving independent companies than any other in the archive. Argo's $3.6 billion, TuSimple's $1.6 billion, Embark's SPAC, the autonomous-trucking cohort that died inside eighteen months. The thesis was clean enough to fit on a slide. The cost curve on edge cases was not.
Cruise
2013 - 2024GM's driverless robotaxi service, grounded after a pedestrian was dragged and then scrapped once the parent company stopped funding it.
$10.0B raised · 12 years aliveGhost Autonomy
2017 - 2024Aftermarket self-driving software for consumer cars.
$220M raised · 7 years aliveTuSimple (US)
2015 - 2024An autonomous trucking company that ran some of the first driverless freight runs in the US before retreating to Asia.
$1.6B raised · 8 years aliveEmbark Trucks
2016 - 2023An autonomous trucking startup building a self-driving software platform for long-haul Class 8 freight.
$614M raised · 7 years aliveArgo AI
2016 - 2022Autonomous vehicle software, backed by Ford and Volkswagen.
$3.6B raised · 6 years aliveAmazon Scout
2019 - 2022Amazon's six-wheeled, cooler-sized autonomous robot that rolled along sidewalks delivering packages to customers' doors.
Undisclosed raised · 4 years aliveLocal Motors Olli
2007 - 2022A 3D-printed, electric, self-driving shuttle designed for low-speed campus and city routes.
Undisclosed raised · 15 years aliveOptimus Ride
2015 - 2022An MIT spinout building low-speed autonomous electric shuttles for geofenced communities and campuses.
$84M raised · 7 years aliveVoyage Auto
2017 - 2021An autonomous taxi startup that operated low-speed self-driving cars inside private retirement communities.
$52M raised · 4 years aliveStarsky Robotics
2016 - 2020A self-driving truck startup that paired highway autonomy with remote human teleoperation for the first and last miles.
$22M raised · 4 years aliveDrive.ai
2015 - 2019A self-driving car startup spun out of Stanford's AI Lab, known for retrofitted vans running geofenced shuttle pilots in Texas.
$77M raised · 4 years aliveOtto
2016 - 2018A self-driving truck startup that made the first commercial autonomous freight delivery before being absorbed and shut by Uber.
Undisclosed raised · 3 years alive