Highland leads $16m round for NuTonomy’s Singapore push

Other participants in the round included prior investors Fontinalis Partners, Signal Ventures and Samsung Ventures as well as EDBI, the corporate VC arm of Singapore's Economic Development Board. This follows a $3.6 million seed round earlier this year.

The funding will be used to advance the deployment of self-driving vehicles in Singapore, where NuTonomy has already gained government approval to test its existing R&D fleet on public roads. The company's taxi business is planned to incorporate novel urban navigation software, smartphone hailing functions and remote fleet management technologies.

"NuTonomy's self-driving software is ushering in a new era of autonomous mobility," said Chris Thomas, founder and partner at Fontinalis Partners said in a statement. "The opportunity to partner with teams like NuTonomy's - groups that are reshaping transportation systems around the globe - is the reason we founded Fontinalis."

Having spun out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013, NuTonomy has about 25 employees with the majority working in Singapore. The company completed its first driverless vehicle test in the country earlier this year. This work aims to adapt autonomous motion planning and decision-marking protocols already used in the aviation industry for land-based vehicles.

Consolidation of the company's presence in Singapore coincides with a commitment from the local government to collaborate with industry players in its "smart nation" initiative. To this end, Singapore's Infocomm Development Authority has called for S$2.8 billion ($2 billion) of urban technology infrastructure tenders during the 2016 financial year.

According to McKinsey & Company, up to 15% of new cars sold in 2030 could be fully autonomous. Driverless vehicle services in areas such as shared mobility, connectivity technology and feature upgrades are expected to boost automobile industry revenue by 30% during the next 15 years to about $6.7 trillion. Other start-up activity anticipating this development includes the formation of a smart city accelerator by Hong Kong incubator Nest and Japanese auto giant Nissan.

Founded in 1998, Highland maintains offices the US and China and targets early-stage technology companies with potential to disrupt large markets. It claims to have raised more than $3.5 billion in committed capital and invested in over 225 companies. Fontinalis is a US-based VC focused on transportation.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Technology
• Early-stage
• EDBI
• Samsung Venture Investment
• Transportation
• Singapore