Autonomous Vehicle Funding Tracker (62 deals)

Our funding tracker covering the autonomous vehicle market

Below is the table listing all the deals. You may find our methodology at the end of this page.

And, if you want to gain a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report covering the Autonomous Vehicle Market.

Is autonomous vehicle funding really a $30 billion market today?

Autonomous vehicle funding currently looks enormous on paper, but the $29.55 billion headline badly overstates what a typical AV company can actually raise.

We tracked 61 financing events from January 2024 through September 2026. Of those, 56 have a usable funding amount, giving us at least $29.55 billion of known capital.

The distortion appears as soon as we remove the biggest rounds. Excluding financings above $100 million leaves only $1.58 billion. Excluding those above $50 million leaves $541.6 million.

The average disclosed round is $527.7 million, while the median is just $56.35 million. A ninefold gap between the two tells us that the average has very little connection with what most companies experience.

Waymo's $16 billion round alone accounts for more than half of all known capital. So when people see tens of billions flowing into autonomous vehicles today, they are mostly seeing a few giant commercialization bets sitting on top of a much smaller funding market.

Market measure	January 2024–September 2026
Financing events	61
Unique funded companies	32
Deals with usable amounts	56
Known capital	$29.55B+
Median disclosed round	$56.35M
Average disclosed round	$527.7M
Average / median	9.36x
Capital excluding rounds above $100M	$1.58B
Capital excluding rounds above $50M	$541.6M

How many autonomous vehicle companies are actually getting funded?

Autonomous vehicle funding is currently spread across just 32 companies, and more than half of those companies raised more than once.

Fifteen companies appear only once in our dataset. Ten raised twice and seven raised at least three times, meaning 17 of the 32 funded companies came back for another round during the period.

Those repeat fundraisers captured almost all the money. Single-round companies raised about $1.56 billion, while companies with multiple financings accumulated roughly $27.99 billion, or 94.7% of known capital.

That gives us a much clearer picture of how AV funding works these days. Investors keep putting increasingly large amounts behind a relatively small group of companies that have already survived one or more financing cycles.

A database with 61 deals can therefore look broader than the market really is. At company level, the circle is surprisingly small.

Is Waymo swallowing most of the autonomous vehicle funding market?

Waymo currently dominates autonomous vehicle funding so heavily that it changes almost every market-wide dollar statistic.

We count $21.6 billion of closed Waymo financing during the period: $5.6 billion in October 2024 and another $16 billion in 2026. That gives Waymo 73.1% of all known company-level capital we tracked.

The distance to everyone else is huge. Wayve raised about $2.31 billion, Waabi $950 million, Neolix more than $820 million and Zelos more than $700 million.

Waymo's financing also corresponds to a very different stage of the business. When the company announced the $16 billion round, it said it had delivered 15 million rides during 2025, was already providing more than 400,000 rides a week and planned to enter more than 20 additional cities during 2026.

At that point, the bill includes far more than autonomy R&D. Waymo has to add vehicles, teams, operating capacity and new-city infrastructure while continuing to develop the Waymo Driver.

There is plenty happening beyond Waymo, but any AV funding chart that leaves Waymo mixed into the total without explaining its weight gives a warped picture of the market.

What does a normal autonomous vehicle funding round look like today?

A normal autonomous vehicle financing is much closer to $56 million than to the half-billion-dollar average.

Twenty-seven of the 56 financings with usable amounts came in below $50 million. Six more landed between $50 million and $100 million. The remaining 23 reached $100 million or more and account for almost all the dollars.

Recent deals make the middle of the market easier to picture. Beep closed a $20 million Series B in September 2026. Turing's July Series A extension contained $43 million of equity. Humble Robotics raised $24 million at Seed, while Niulinx raised about $44.5 million.

These are still large startup rounds. Autonomous driving requires expensive engineering teams, compute, vehicles, testing and real-world deployment long before a company reaches full commercial scale.

The useful benchmark for a serious AV startup today is therefore tens of millions of dollars. The billion-dollar rounds belong to a tiny group that has reached a completely different stage.

Which autonomous vehicle companies have raised the most money?

The biggest autonomous vehicle companies have pulled far away from the rest of the funding market.

The top five companies hold 89.3% of known capital, and the top ten reach 95.9%.

Several of those companies also raised repeatedly. Wayve appears three times, Neolix three times and Zelos five times. Waabi, DiDi Autonomous Driving and Gatik each return for another financing as well.

Capital concentration is therefore building company by company rather than coming from a random collection of unrelated megadeals.

Company	Financing events	Known capital in the period
Waymo	2	$21.60B
Wayve	3	$2.31B
Waabi	2	$950M
Neolix	3	>$820.8M
Zelos	5	>$700M
DiDi Autonomous Driving	2	$578.7M
Motional	1	$475M
Shanghai Zaofu Intelligent Technology	1	>$417.4M
CargoX	1	$250M
Gatik	2	$230M

Which part of autonomous vehicles is getting the most funding?

Robotaxis currently absorb the most autonomous vehicle capital by a huge margin, while autonomous trucking produces far more actual financing activity.

Robotaxi Fleets generated only five deals across four companies, yet those financings account for $22.46 billion, or 76% of known capital.

Autonomous Trucking looks almost like a different market. We found 24 financings across 11 companies, the highest deal count of any category, but only about $3.05 billion of capital.

Autonomous Driving Systems also has real breadth, with 17 financings across 12 companies and roughly $2.36 billion raised. Vehicle Platforms add another $1.54 billion.

Shuttles sit much lower despite having six financings. The category has only about $107 million of disclosed capital, and two of its rounds have undisclosed amounts.

So the category getting the most money and the category producing the most funded companies are completely different.

Category	Deals	Companies	Known capital	Median round
Robotaxi Fleets	5	4	$22.46B	$475M
Autonomous Trucking	24	11	$3.05B+	$82.8M
Autonomous Driving Systems	17	12	$2.36B	$52.3M
Autonomous Vehicle Platforms	7	6	$1.54B	$40M
Autonomous Shuttle Systems	6	4	$107M+	$23.7M
Consumer Autonomous Cars	2	1	$28.7M	$14.35M
Total	61	32 unique companies	$29.55B+	$56.35M

Why are robotaxi funding rounds so huge right now?

Robotaxi companies raise giant checks because commercial deployment turns autonomous driving into a fleet-and-operations business.

Waymo makes the economics obvious. Once a company is running hundreds of thousands of rides each week and adding cities, capital goes into vehicles, local operations, fleet infrastructure, safety work, hiring and continued development of the driving system.

Motional provides another example. Hyundai injected $475 million of new equity in 2024 as the ownership structure around the robotaxi company changed. We excluded Hyundai's separate purchase of Aptiv's existing shares because that money went to Aptiv rather than into Motional.

Verne, formerly Project 3 Mobility, raised roughly $107 million around its autonomous urban mobility business. DiDi Autonomous Driving later raised about $280.7 million in 2025 after an earlier $298 million financing.

Once robotaxi companies move beyond technical development and start building an operating network, the amount of capital they can consume rises very fast.

Why is autonomous trucking getting so many funding deals?

Autonomous trucking attracts more financings because the commercial problem can be split into many narrower routes, vehicle types and logistics use cases.

We see companies working on highway freight, regional distribution, middle-mile networks, urban delivery and autonomous robovans. That leaves room for more business models than we see in robotaxis.

Waabi raised $200 million in 2024 and then $750 million in 2026. Gatik moved from a $30 million strategic investment from Isuzu to a $200 million Series D. KargoBot went from an $82.6 million Series A to a round above $100 million.

China is especially dense. Neolix appears three times and Zelos five times. Japan has repeated rounds from T2 and RoboTruck. More recently, CargoX entered the market with a $250 million Series A focused on autonomous freight across last-, middle- and long-haul routes.

Truck companies can therefore start with a narrower operational problem and expand from there. Some eventually need several hundred million dollars, but the category supports many more intermediate financing steps than robotaxis do.

Are investors still backing new autonomous vehicle startups?

Investors are mostly doubling down on autonomous vehicle companies they already know rather than filling the market with new names.

Follow-on financings account for 54 of the 61 deals we tracked, or 88.5%. Only seven qualify as first financings during the period.

The money is even more tilted toward existing companies. Those seven first financings account for only around 2.6% of known capital.

There are some meaningful exceptions. Shanghai Zaofu attracted more than $417 million after being formed in 2025. CargoX raised $250 million in its first recorded round. Humble Robotics came out of stealth with $24 million, while Niulinx raised about $44.5 million.

Those examples show that a new AV company can still get funded today. They are simply rare compared with the amount of money going back into Waymo, Wayve, Waabi, Neolix, Zelos and other companies that were already established in the funding ecosystem.

How old are autonomous vehicle companies when the big funding checks arrive?

Big autonomous vehicle rounds usually arrive after years of development, and the median company is five years old when it raises.

The age progression is quite clean. Seed financings happen at a median company age of two years. Series A comes around three years, Series B around five, Series C around 6.5 and Series D or later around nine.

The differences also show up by business model. Trucking companies have a median age of four years at financing. Driving Systems and Robotaxi companies are around six, Vehicle Platforms around seven and Shuttle Systems around eight.

That timeline fits what these companies actually have to build. An AV startup needs software, data, simulation, vehicle integration, safety validation, partners and real-world testing before investors can seriously underwrite large-scale deployment.

The market currently rewards maturity much more heavily than novelty.

Where does autonomous vehicle funding get hardest?

Autonomous vehicle funding gets much harder around Series C because the size of the required check suddenly jumps into another league.

We found 11 Series B financings and eight Series C financings. That drop alone is fairly modest.

The money changes much more dramatically. The median Series B round is $31 million. At Series C it reaches $298 million, almost ten times as much.

Wayve's $1.05 billion Series C, Waabi's $750 million Series C and DeepRoute.ai's $100 million Series C show how wide that stage can be, but the direction is clear: companies reaching this point are asking investors to finance commercial expansion, much heavier compute and validation programs, vehicle integration and deployment.

The stage counts should not be read as startup survival rates because these are different companies raising at different moments. What they do show is the size of the financial jump required once an AV business moves beyond normal venture-scale development.

Stage	Deals	Companies	Known capital	Median round
Seed	7	7	$119.7M	$20M
Series A	8	7	$700.9M	$72.8M
Series B	11	8	$715.7M	$31M
Series C	8	7	$8.02B	$298M
Series D+	9	7	$18.54B	$240.4M
Growth Equity	7	7	$539.3M disclosed	$28.7M disclosed
Unknown / non-standard	11	8	$913.6M	$28.1M

Is the U.S. really leading autonomous vehicle funding today?

The U.S. leads autonomous vehicle funding in dollars today, but most of that lead comes from Waymo.

North America accounts for 16 financings and at least $23.58 billion. Asia-Pacific has more than twice as many deals at 36, yet only about $3.22 billion of known capital. Europe has eight deals and roughly $2.50 billion.

The country split makes the contrast even sharper. China produced 19 deals across nine companies and at least $2.86 billion. The U.S. produced 14 deals across eight companies and $22.63 billion.

Waymo generates roughly 92% of North American known capital by itself.

Europe has a similar concentration problem. Wayve accounts for about $2.31 billion of Europe's $2.50 billion total.

If we are asking where AV financing happens most often, Asia-Pacific is currently the busiest region. If we are asking where the giant checks are being written, the U.S. comes out far ahead because one company has reached an exceptional scale.

Who keeps showing up in autonomous vehicle funding?

Strategic investors currently hold more of the autonomous vehicle funding market together than repeat financial leads do.

Lead-investor coverage is only 54.1%, but among the 33 deals where we could identify a lead, we found 57 different lead or co-lead names. Only Eclipse, Khosla Ventures, Blue Lake Capital and CDH BAIFU lead more than one financing in our dataset.

Strategic investors recur much more often. NVIDIA and Uber each appear in five financings. Alphabet, GAC, Horizon Robotics, Isuzu, Microsoft and Volvo Group Venture Capital also return.

Overall, 68.9% of the deals include at least one strategic investor. The median financing with strategic participation is $72.75 million, versus $27.75 million without it. Every Series D-or-later financing we tracked includes a strategic investor.

Wayve is probably the clearest current example. Its 2026 Series D brought together Microsoft, NVIDIA, Uber, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Stellantis, while a later $60 million extension added AMD, Arm and Qualcomm. Beep's September 2026 Series B was led by Mobileye. Gatik's earlier $30 million Isuzu investment came with a partnership aimed at Level 4 truck commercialization.

These companies need chips, vehicles, manufacturing, fleets and routes to market. That gives industrial backers a much more central role here than we usually see in software funding.

Investor	Role in our dataset	Financing events
NVIDIA	Strategic	5
Uber	Strategic	5
Alphabet	Strategic	2
GAC	Strategic	2
Horizon Robotics	Strategic	2
Isuzu	Strategic	2
Microsoft	Strategic	2
Mitsubishi Estate	Strategic	2
Volvo Group Venture Capital	Strategic	2
Eclipse	Lead / co-lead	2
Khosla Ventures	Lead / co-lead	2
Blue Lake Capital	Lead / co-lead	2
CDH BAIFU	Lead / co-lead	2

What is the autonomous vehicle funding market still missing today?

The biggest gap in autonomous vehicle funding today is breadth: too few new companies are entering, and some mature categories still struggle to attract scale capital.

Only seven first financings appear across almost 33 months, and Seed also contains only seven deals. Most of the market is therefore built around companies that were already funded before this period.

Autonomous Shuttle Systems show another kind of gap. The median company is eight years old, yet disclosed funding totals only around $107 million across six events. Beep's latest round was $20 million, still a completely different order of magnitude from the capital available to the biggest robotaxi and trucking companies.

Consumer Autonomous Cars are barely visible as a standalone category, with one company and two financings. Some of that probably comes from classification because companies targeting passenger vehicles often fit more naturally under Driving Systems or Vehicle Platforms.

Robotaxis have the opposite shape: enormous funding with only four companies.

AV capital is available today, sometimes in astonishing quantities. There just aren't many places where that capital is concentrating.

Can we trust the autonomous vehicle funding total?

We treat the autonomous vehicle funding total as a carefully audited floor because several financings were undisclosed, lower-bounded or structured in ways that make simple addition unreliable.

Five of the 61 financings have no defensible exact amount. Four more were announced only as greater than a stated figure, and another 22 involve approximate currency conversions.

Some of the biggest problems come from how companies describe rounds.

Alphabet announced a commitment of up to $5 billion for Waymo over multiple years in July 2024. We excluded that from closed-financing totals because the full amount was not capital raised on that date.

Nuro is another good example. The company ultimately described its Series E as $203 million, but $106 million was raised in the first tranche and another $97 million closed later. Counting $203 million first and then adding the $97 million again would double-count part of the round.

TIER IV's June 2024 announcement described a roughly $54 million Series B extension that included the earlier Isuzu investment already recorded separately. We therefore use only the incremental amount for the later event.

We applied the same principle elsewhere. Hyundai's $475 million new-equity investment in Motional counts, while its separate purchase of Aptiv's existing Motional shares does not. Turing's July 2026 financing combined $43 million of equity with a $36 million loan, so only the equity enters our funding figures.

Those adjustments make the total less neat, but much more useful.

What should we actually take away from the funding data?

Autonomous vehicle funding today is a mature, unusually top-heavy market. There is plenty of capital, but access to very large checks is concentrated among a small number of companies that have already spent years developing and deploying their technology.

The typical funding experience is far less spectacular than the headlines suggest. Most companies live in a market of tens of millions of dollars, while Waymo, Wayve, Waabi and a few other companies operate in the hundreds of millions or billions.

Robotaxis and trucking have developed very different funding models. Robotaxis consume the most money because commercial expansion requires fleets and operating networks. Trucking supports far more companies because freight can be broken into narrower routes and commercial use cases.

Investors are also clearly prioritizing continuity. Follow-on rounds dominate, while first-time financings remain scarce. The market currently looks better at scaling companies that already exist than at producing a large new generation of AV startups.

The biggest financial jump arrives around Series C, when a $30 million-style venture round can suddenly become a several-hundred-million-dollar commercialization raise. That step helps explain why the number of serious scale players remains small.

Strategic investors are deeply embedded in the market. Chipmakers, automakers, ride-hailing platforms and logistics groups keep returning because AV companies need infrastructure and distribution alongside money.

The clearest way to read the market today is to ignore the giant headline total for a moment and ask where the money repeatedly goes. It goes to a small group of increasingly mature companies that investors believe can move from autonomous-driving technology into real transport operations.