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The
fresh funds, investors of which also include Hong Kong-based
investment firm Composite Capital, will be used to expand its
commercial fleet to 50 trucks by June from 11 currently, it
said.
The latest funding round was completed in December and brings
TuSimple's total funding to date to $178 million, it added.
Other investors in previous rounds include U.S. chipmaker Nvidia
Corp.
"After three years of intense focus to reach our technical
goals, we have moved beyond research into the serious work of
building a commercial solution," said Xiaodi Hou, TuSimple
founder and chief technology officer.
The California-based company currently makes daily deliveries in
the U.S. state of Arizona on highways and local streets for 12
customers and plans to expand its operations to Texas. Its
level-4 vehicles are able to drive completely autonomously in
most, but not all conditions.
Silicon Valley firms to traditional carmakers have been racing
to put fully commercial self-driving vehicles on the road and
transportation experts say that the trucking industry could be
among the earliest users because of the relative predictability
of highways compared with busy city streets.
German luxury carmaker Daimler last month said it will invest
500 million euros ($573 million) in the coming years to develop
highly autonomous trucks.
Ride-hailing giant Uber also bought self-driving truck business
Otto in 2016 but announced last year that it would shutter the
unit to focus on developing autonomous cars.
(Reporting by Yilei Sun and Brenda Goh in Shanghai; Editing by
Stephen Coates)
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