Starship Technologies, which produces autonomous delivery robots, has announced a US$90m (£71.7m) funding round led by two prior investors.
Starship builds self-driving last-mile robots, with the company reportedly completing more than six million deliveries since launching in 2014.
Read more: They see me rolling – the world of last-mile delivery robots
It has said the new funding will go towards expanding operations, further investing in its world-leading technology and reaching more customers.
Each Starship robot can run for 18 hours fully charged, Starship has claimed, with the average delivery taking only the same amount of energy as boiling a kettle for a single cup of tea.
By using robots, rather than humans on low wages riding through traffic, the company hopes to pioneer a more ethical, sustainable business that is used by customers including Bolt, Co-Op, Grubhub and Sodexo.
Ahti Heinla, co-founder and CEO at Starship Technologies, said: “Autonomous delivery isn’t some science fiction concept from Bladerunner for decades in the future, it’s a reality for hundreds of thousands of people every day.
“Building a company like Starship takes at least a decade of perfecting the technology, streamlining operations and reducing costs to make last-mile autonomous delivery viable and sustainable at scale.
“Now we’re ready to take on the world and with ambitions to build a category-dominating company that can change the daily lives of millions of people in thousands of locations worldwide.”
The most recent funding round was co-led by two previous investors: venture capital firm Plural and Iconical, a London-based investor backed by Janus Friis, co-founder of both Skype and Starship.
With the addition of this funding, the robot company has raised US$230m (£183.3m) in total so far.
