Autonomous Delivery Startup Nuro to Restructure, Pause Commercial Expansion

Autonomous delivery startup Nuro is in the midst of a restructuring that will result in layoffs and shift resources away from commercial operations and toward R&D.

This is the second time in less than a year that Nuro — a darling of the AV world that has raised $2.13 billion — has laid off workers in a bid to cut costs and extend capital runway. In November, Nuro laid off about 300 people, or 20%, of its workforce. Nuro declined to share how many of its roughly 1,100 employees will be affected. Employees are expected to learn who will be laid off by the end of the week.

This time, the company isn’t just cutting jobs; Nuro is changing its operations, a shift that will pause plans to ramp up commercial operations this year and delay volume production of its Nuro bot — the third-generation, or R3, delivery robot designed to be the flagship of its commercial strategy. Nuro will be able to double its runway by making these changes, giving it enough capital to operate another three years without raising more money, co-founders Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu wrote in a blog post published Wednesday.