- Aurora Innovation has raised $600 milion as part of a Series B funding round from Kia and Hyundai.
- Baillie Gifford, Tesla's top shareholder after CEO Elon Musk, also participated, Bloomberg News reported.
- Aurora cofounder Sterling Anderson previously worked on Tesla's Autopilot program.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
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A secretive self-driving startup worth $2.5 billion just raised $600 million with help from Tesla's biggest outside investor
Aurora Innovation
Aurora Innovation , a self-driving startup worth $2.5 billion, has raised another $600 million round of venture capital with backers including Hyundai and Kia.
Baillie Gifford, a $221 billion Scottish investment manager that is also Tesla's second-largest shareholder after CEO Elon Musk, also participated in the round, Bloomberg News reported , but the firm wasn't included in Aurora's announcement. A spokesperson for Baillie Gifford did not respond to a request for comment.
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The Series B addition brings the round to about $1.13 billion in total, which makes up a bulk of the roughly $1.2 billion in total funding that Aurora has raised to-date.
"Together with all of our ecosystem partners, we are seeing the convergence of a powerful platform that will deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly," Aurora cofounder Sterling Anderson, who previously oversaw integral parts of Tesla's Model X and Autopilot programs, said in a press-release.
Kia and Hyundai will join Amazon, Sequoia Capital, Geodesic, Shell Ventures and other previous investors as backers of Aurora, which has penned numerous partnerships with automakers like Fiat Chrysler .
In May, Aurora announced plans to purchase Montana-based Blackmore, a company which develops lidar radar systems used in self-driving cars (with Tesla being a major notable exception).
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