UPS, the global package delivery giant, took a minority stake this summer in TuSimple, a self-driving trucking company, but didn’t reveal financial details.
On Tuesday, the San Diego startup revealed that investment was part of an extended Series D financing round that now totals $215 million.
In February, the company said it had raised $95 million in a round led by Sina (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SINA]]), the Chinese tech company that runs the social media site Weibo, which is analogous to Twitter.
Since then, the company has raised an additional $120 million from investors including UPS (NYSE: [[ticker:UPS]]), China’s CDH Investments, and Mando Corp., an automotive supplier in South Korea. In addition to its San Diego headquarters, TuSimple also has operations in China, including an office in Beijing.
The company said the money will be used to expand long-haul service for fleets and, together with equipment manufacturers and automotive suppliers such as Mando, to develop a commercial self-driving truck. The investment brings the total the company has raised from investors since its 2015 founding to $298 million.
TuSimple today has about 50 trucks on the road in which it is testing its self-driving software and hardware, 500 employees worldwide, and 18 customers. With UPS, it has trucks running in Arizona between Phoenix and Tucson as part of its testing efforts. TuSimple also ran a two-week pilot program with the US Postal Service in March, running mail between Dallas and Phoenix.
Read more about the company and its efforts to develop a commercial self-driving truck here and here.
