May Mobility raises $50 million in funding round led by Toyota

May Mobility, an autonomous transportation-as-a-service provider, has closed a $50 million Series B funding round led by Toyota.

There was also participation from Sparx Group, alongside return investors Millennium Technology Value Partners, Cyrus Capital Partners, BMW iVentures, and Toyota AI Ventures.

The company says the round will help fund strategic hires across the engineering and operations functions, and expansion of the vehicle fleet to meet growing demand.

In addition to leading the round, Toyota has selected May Mobility as one of their partners in the autonomous TaaS segment for future open mobility platforms.

May Mobility aims to transform cities through autonomous technology to create a safer, greener, more accessible world.

To accomplish this vision, their current focus is on reimagining transportation by deploying their autonomous shuttles, helping people get where they need to go safely, easily and with a lot more fun.

The company is currently focused on the US first-mile-last-mile transportation market, specifically on urban cores.

These service routes are in high-density areas helping both riders and cities solve for gridlock, wait times, accessibility and availability problems.

May Mobility’s current fleet of electric vehicles have already provided more than 170,000 revenue-generating rides with an enterprise service working with both public and private customers in Detroit, and Grand Rapids, in Michigan, and Providence, Rhode Island.

With each new launch, the company expands its technical expertise by solving a different set of mobility needs.

Edwin Olson, president and CEO of May Mobility, says: “We are extremely excited to partner with Toyota and our other investors in this next phase of growth for our company.

“This round will help us accelerate our path to executing our vision, leveraging our best-in-class software stack and continuing to tap into the $28 billion US first and last mile transportation market.”

Keiji Yamamoto, Toyota operating officer and president of Toyota’s in-house Connected Company, says: “May Mobility already has a track record of commercializing autonomous driving shuttles in the US, and we see this as an exciting opportunity to collaborate with a seasoned partner in this area.

“By working together, we hope to accelerate our efforts at Toyota aimed towards realizing ‘Mobility for All’.”

The Series B round brings the company’s total raised to $84 million to date, and the company says this “positions the company to further extend its leadership in the autonomous driving landscape“.