Self-driving startup Zoox has raised $200 million in new convertible note funding, according to media reports. The raise is part of a Series C round that is expected to close later this year or early in 2020.
Investor names were not disclosed.
Founded in 2014, the Foster City, California-based Zoox stands out from the self-driving vehicle crowd with its plan to build a custom robo-taxi instead of retrofitting existing vehicle platforms.
The company, which previously raised a $465 million Series B round, has been testing on public roads in San Francisco and more recently in Las Vegas. It joins competitors such as Cruise, which raised $1.15 billion in May, and Argo AI, which signed a $2.6 billion partnership with Volkswagen in July.
Earlier this week Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson took a swipe at another self-driving competitor, Tesla, saying he doesn’t believe the company will reach its goal of having fully autonomous vehicles on the roads by 2020.
The comments, delivered during a conference in San Francisco on October 22, come as Tesla is rolling out functions of its Full Self-Driving suite, which Elon Musk has said will soon be “feature complete.”
Tesla is set to disclose its third-quarter earnings today after market close.
