Toyota Invests in May Mobility, Selects it as Partner
May Mobility, an autonomous Transportation-as-a-Service(TaaS) provider, has closed a $50 million Series B round led by Toyota Motor Corporation with participation from SPARX Group alongside return investors Millennium Technology Value Partners, Cyrus Capital Partners, BMW iVentures, and Toyota AI Ventures.
The round will help fund strategic hires across the engineering and operations functions, and expansion of the vehicle fleet to meet growing demand. In addition to leading the round, Toyota has selected May Mobility as one of their partners in the autonomous TaaS segment for future open mobility platforms.
May Mobility, founded in 2017 and headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States, is developing autonomous vehicles with a focus on system level safety design. The company plans to lead the industry with their system design approach and best in class user experience.
May Mobility aims to transform cities through autonomous technology to create a safer, greener, more accessible world. To accomplish this vision, their current focus is on reimagining transportation by deploying their autonomous shuttles, helping people get where they need to go safely, easily and with a lot more fun.
The company is currently focused on the US first-mile-last-mile transportation market, specifically on urban cores. These service routes are in high-density areas helping both riders and cities solve for gridlock, wait times, accessibility and availability problems. May Mobility’s current fleet of electric vehicles have already provided more than 170,000 revenue-generating rides with an enterprise service working with both public and private customers in Detroit, MI, Grand Rapids, MI and Providence, RI. With each new launch, the company expands its technical expertise by solving a different set of mobility needs.
“We are extremely excited to partner with Toyota and our other investors in this next phase of growth for our company,” said Edwin Olson, President and Chief Executive Officer of May Mobility. “This round will help us accelerate our path to executing our vision, leveraging our best-in-class software stack and continuing to tap into the $28 billion U.S. first and last mile transportation market.”
“May Mobility already has a track record of commercializing autonomous driving shuttles in the U.S., and we see this as an exciting opportunity to collaborate with a seasoned partner in this area,” said Keiji Yamamoto, Toyota Operating Officer and President of Toyota’s in-house Connected Company. He added, “By working together, we hope to accelerate our efforts at Toyota aimed towards realizing ‘Mobility for All’.”
The Series B round brings the company’s total raised to $84 million to date and positions the company to further extend its leadership in the autonomous driving landscape.
Source: May Mobility