May Mobility, an Ann Arbor, MI-based startup developing self-driving shuttles, today announced that it has raised a $22 million Series A funding round. The company has raised approximately $33.5 million since its inception in 2017.
The new investment was co-led by Millennium New Horizons and Cyrus Capital Partners, with participation from LG Technology Ventures, Thayer Ventures, and return investors BMW i Ventures, Maven Ventures, Toyota AI Ventures, and Y Combinator. According to a press release issued by May, the company will spend the new capital on expanding “engineering and operations” in order to meet growing demand.
The company was not available for comment, but in a statement, May CEO Edwin Olson said, “Our unique technology solves customers’ real-world transportation problems, and we are continuously collecting valuable technical data and market insights while generating revenue in the process.”
May has found success focusing on a specific segment of the emerging “mobility-as-a-service” market: short trips in urban cores. May’s first commercial deployment was in Detroit last year, where its autonomous electric shuttles transported Bedrock employees around a downtown loop that took them to their office buildings and parking lots, nightlife, and other nearby attractions. A human fleet attendant is typically onboard the shuttles to monitor operations and answer rider questions, the company has said in past interviews with Xconomy.
May continues to operate the private service in Detroit, and last fall added a public self-driving shuttle service in downtown Columbus, OH.. The company says it will roll out additional public deployments in Grand Rapids, MI, and Providence, RI, in 2019.
May is trying to grow its national reach as it competes with rivals such as Waymo and Drive.ai, which have launched self-driving vehicle programs available for limited public use in Arizona and Texas, respectively.
“Simply put, we believe that the future of urban transportation is shared, electric, and autonomous,” said Benjamin Birnbaum, co-founder of Cyrus Capital affiliate Repower Group, in a press release. “We believe that May Mobility’s impact on accessibility, quality, and cost of urban transportation will be transformative for the way that people move around cities.”
