Voyage Raises $31m to Deliver Self-Driving Cars
Accelerating the development & deployment of self-driving cars
Voyage has completed a $31m Series B fundraise. The round, led by Franklin Templeton — with significant participation from Khosla Ventures, Jaguar Land-Rover’s InMotion Ventures, and Chevron Technology Ventures — brings our total capital raised to $52m. At Voyage, our mission is to deliver on the promise of self-driving cars, and we are thrilled to be working with forward-thinking investors who deeply believe in that mission. Together with these new resources, we will deliver an autonomous ride-hailing service to customers who truly need it!
What’s Next?
We will be utilizing this capital to ready our self-driving technology for commercialization, grow our team of self-driving experts, expand our fleet of G2 self-driving cars in California and Florida, and introduce our G3 self-driving car.
“Chevron has been supporting the public’s transportation needs for over 100 years. As our customers’ mobility needs and preferences change, we want to continue to be part of their journeys. Our investment in Voyage affirms this commitment.
We established the Future Energy Fund in 2018 with an initial commitment of $100 million to invest in breakthrough technologies that enable the ongoing energy transition. The fund looks for technologies that lower emissions and support low carbon value chains. Our investment in Voyage fits well within the objectives of the Future Energy Fund while also informing our perspective on the changing energy landscape.” – Barbara Burger, President of Chevron Technology Ventures
Readying Our Self-Driving Technology
Many residents within our communities don’t have access to transportation options that work for them. Our first driverless product (with no Test Driver) aims to ensure there’s always a viable option to move around independently within a community. We begin with a self-driving car that can travel point-to-point within our communities at speeds up to 25MPH.
We’ve been working for over two years on this driverless product, and progress has been rapid. Our vehicles intelligently and autonomously navigate the complex neighborhoods of our communities, and safely transport our passengers door-to-door. This capability has been enhanced by recent accomplishments of our engineers, such as transitioning to a safety-critical and certifiable middleware, shipping a brand new prediction engine with an over 10x performance improvement, and creating triple redundancy in our perception system. This capital will take us to the next level, enabling us to commercialize safe, self-driving technology within and outside these communities.
Here’s a video from our team showing just what our self-driving technology can do.
As the state-of-the-art advances, we will advance our self-driving technology with more capabilities, such as faster speeds, enabling driverless in progressively more complex communities.
Growing Our Team of Self-Driving Experts
In the last 12 months, the amazing team building our self-driving technology has grown fast. We also super-charged our engineering leadership by welcoming Drew Gray (ex-Uber ATG, Otto, Cruise, Tesla) and Davide Bacchet (ex-NIO, Apple SPG, Tesla) as our CTO and Director of Autonomy, respectively. What’s more, we continue to attract talented Voyagers in operations and service delivery, growing our total headcount by 300% since our Series A in January 2018.
With this fresh capital, we’re ramping up for further growth, hiring for engineering, operations, and leadership positions in Palo Alto and Florida. In addition, we continue to see huge traction with hiring remotely for certain engineering positions. Talent is everywhere, and we are eager to welcome the most talented and mission-driven people to Voyage, regardless of where they live.
“Since investing in the company’s Series A in 2018, it’s been fantastic to watch the business go from strength to strength. The company has made some incredible hires which have been instrumental in enabling the development of Voyage’s state-of-the-art technology. We’re excited to continue working with Oliver Cameron and his world-class team at Voyage. They’ve shown us that they have the capability to quickly make self-driving, autonomous taxis in residential communities a reality, sooner than anyone would have thought.” – Sebastian Peck, Managing Director of Jaguar Land-Rover’s InMotion Ventures
Expanding Our Fleet of G2 Self-Driving Cars
Voyage, like many self-driving car projects, began with a simply retrofitted Ford Fusion we named the G1. Although we knew the G1 couldn’t take us all the way to driverless, it was an integral step on our technology roadmap. With the introduction of our G2 self-driving Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivan, with its incredible sensor vision and best-in-class safety systems, we knew we had the vehicle to take us to driverless. This funding and our unique partnership with Enterprise and communities like The Villages® will enable us to build and scale more G2 self-driving cars to better serve the communities in which we operate.
We aren’t yet ready to unveil our G3 self-driving car, but I can promise you it is special!
Join The Voyage
A voyage is a journey with purpose. It requires focus, dedication, teamwork, and resilience. I’m incredibly proud of the team of Voyagers we’ve built over the past two years, and how far we’ve come in putting safe and reliable self-driving cars on the road for people who need access to better mobility options. With this new investment from invaluable advisors, we can travel further, faster to innovate and reach our destination together.
Does Voyage sound interesting to you? We’re hiring for engineering, operations, and leadership positions in Palo Alto and Florida!
