June 15, 2018—rideOS, a technology platform designed to accelerate the safe, global roll-out of self-driving vehicles, today announced it has raised $9 million in Series A funding.
rideOS will use the latest funding for recruiting, platform research and development, and additional partnerships. "There are dozens of teams focused on bringing a single self-driving car to market. rideOS is focused on what happens next—what you need to enable a fleet of self-driving vehicles. Their technology has a true network effect—every car that plugs into their network makes every other rideOS car safer and more efficient," said Mike Vernal, partner at Sequoia and rideOS board member. "rideOS has an incredibly talented team with deep subject-matter expertise. We are thrilled to partner with them."
Sequoia Capital led the round with participation from Graph Ventures and SV Angel, and Sequoia Partner Mike Vernal has joined rideOS's board of directors. In tandem, the company has announced its partnership with Ford-owned Autonomic, to address key challenges in the area of self-driving vehicle technology.
The rideOS team is made up of industry experts with decades of experience leading product teams in the mapping and navigation spaces. The company is growing quickly and pursuing partnerships with leading businesses industry-wide.
rideOS was started in June 2017 by two founding members of Uber's Advanced Technology Division on mapping and self-driving vehicle technology.
The rideOS platform provides a broad set of products and services that can be used as building blocks for developing on-demand self-driving services. Its core services operate in real-time through the cloud and include autonomous vehicle routing, estimated time of arrival (ETA) calculations, dispatch, supply positioning, multi-rider trip planning, and fleet management dashboards.
"We're ecstatic to have received Sequoia's first investment in the U.S. self-driving vehicle space. Their backing and track record of helping founders build legendary companies will help us to pursue our mission more efficiently and strengthen valuable partnerships with industry visionaries like Autonomic," said rideOS CTO and co-founder Chris Blumenberg.
