Autonomous delivery vehicle maker Nuro raised $600 million in its latest funding round, the Silicon Valley-based startup said on Tuesday, bringing on board Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google as an investor.

The funding round, led by Tiger Global Management, lifted Nuro’s valuation to $8.6 billion from $5 billion previously, according to a person close to the deal.

Toyota Motor Corp’s (7203.T) Woven Capital, SoftBank Group Corp’s (9984.T) Vision Fund 1, Kroger Co. (KR.N) were among other investors.

Self-driving startups are racing to build war chests to develop and commercialize technology, an expensive and time-consuming process. Alphabet’s self-driving unit Waymo in June raised $2.5 billion. read more

Nuro, whose R2 unit has no pedals or steering wheel and only room for packages, said it has signed a five-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud to support self-driving simulation and data management.
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