{"id":38685,"date":"2023-10-20T14:58:16","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/australian-founded-self-driving-startup-zoox-hits-2-billion-valuation-despite-operating-in-stealth-mode-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:58:16","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:58:16","slug":"australian-founded-self-driving-startup-zoox-hits-2-billion-valuation-despite-operating-in-stealth-mode-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/australian-founded-self-driving-startup-zoox-hits-2-billion-valuation-despite-operating-in-stealth-mode-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian-founded self-driving startup Zoox hits $2 billion valuation despite operating in “stealth” mode – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cars<\/div>\n

The tech community is in a spin after news that a mysterious, Australian-founded self driving car startup has hit a valuation of $US1.55 billion ($2.01 billion) after closing another $US50 million capital raise last month.<\/p>\n

Zoox, co-founded by Australian entrepreneur Tim Kentley-Klay, was backed in the latest funding round by Hong Kong based hedge fund Composite Capital,<\/a> according to The Wall Street Journal earlier this week.<\/p>\n

But in a world of constant startup announcements, Zoox remains in “stealth” mode, with very little yet revealed about the company’s technology and when its self-driving vehicle could be on the road.<\/p>\n

Yesterday Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes drew attention to the success in a tweet, including a shoutout to Blackbird Ventures, early backers of the Zoox project.<\/p>\n

\n

Another Australian-founded unicorn taking on the world & proud @blackbirdvc<\/a> company – https:\/\/t.co\/7Pw6Vgms6H<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Mike Cannon-Brookes (@mcannonbrookes) November 7, 2016<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Fairfax reports<\/a> that in 2013, Kentley-Klay told an audience at the Connected Car Expo that he was working on a vehicle that was “what comes after a car, a new kind of mobility”. However, he and co-founder Jesse Levinson have not given public interviews on the project. The company’s website is currently a blank slate, although its Linkedin profile<\/a> gives limited explanation of Zoox’s goals:<\/p>\n

“Sitting at the intersection of robotics, machine-learning, and design, Zoox aims to provide the next generation of mobility-as-a-service in urban environments,” it explains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The tech community is in a spin after news that a mysterious, Australian-founded self driving car startup has hit a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38685"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}