The Briefing: Nuro lands $500M For Self-Driving Delivery, SoftBank Posts Big Profit, And More

Here’s what you need to know today in startup and venture news, updated by the Crunchbase News staff throughout the day to keep you in the know.

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Nuro lands $500M for self-driving delivery

Nuro, a developer of electric self-driving road vehicles that transport goods instead of people, announced that it is raising $500 million in a Series C round of funding.

T. Rowe Price led the financing for the Mountain View, Calif.-based company, with participation from new investors including Fidelity Management & Research Company and Baillie Gifford. The round also includes existing investors such as SoftBank Vision Fund 1 and Greylock.

Nuro last raised $940M in February 2019 for its Series B. The company develops and operates a fleet of self-driving vehicles that are built to deliver local goods of all kinds, from pizza to prescriptions.

SoftBank Vision Fund boosted by tech valuation gains

SoftBank Group  reported $6.1 billion in quarterly profit in a Monday earnings announcement, lifted by a broad gain in tech valuations, which took its mammoth SoftBank Vision Fund back into positive territory.

The firm booked a gain of 1.04 trillion yen ($9.1 billion) in the quarter from investments via its two Vision Funds, which largely reflected unrealized gains from  higher valuations for portfolio companies. The figure compared with a loss of 944 billion yen ($9 billion) a year earlier.

Gains for the Vision Fund, however, were reportedly offset by a $1.3 billion hit from bets on technology stocks and derivatives.

Adobe plans acquisition of Workfront for $1.5B

San Jose, California-based Adobe Inc. said Monday that it plans to acquire Lehi, Utah-based Workfront in a $1.5 billion deal that would expand the tech giant’s reach to marketers who use the startup’s software.

The deal, expected to close between year end and February 2021, will fold Workfront’s 3,000 corporate customers and 1 million users into Adobe, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Adobe already integrates several of its products with Workfront’s platform. Workfront has raised a total of $375M in funding over 5 rounds, according to Crunchbase data. Their latest funding was raised on Mar 13, 2019 from a Secondary Market round.

Other News

• Stocks surge on vaccine news, but not all:  U.S. markets were poised to soar on Monday, as investors cheered trial data from drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech indicating their Covid-19 vaccine is 90% effective. However, amid the overall rise, some stocks, particularly companies offering services like at-home fitness and online meetings, saw declines.

Illustration: Dom Guzman