May Mobility steers itself to $11.6m

May Mobility, a US-based autonomous transportation developer that holds five licences from University of Michigan (U-M), announced on Friday that it had raised funding of $11.6m in total.

The spinout’s backers include VC firms Tandem Capital, Trucks Venture Capital and seed fund Maven Ventures, all of which contributed to a $3.5m seed round in August 2017, according to Xconomy, when May Mobility emerged from the Y Combinator accelerator.

May Mobility hopes to launch self-driving shuttle buses in Detroit by the summer of 2018, marketed towards compact areas such as central business districts and corporate parks.

The developer, which piloted its technology in September 2017, will primarily offer upgrades to conventional shuttle vehicles so they can run autonomously.

May Mobility’s 15-strong team is expected double in size during 2018, with recruitment centred on the engineering, operations and customer development departments.

May Mobility was co-founded by Edwin Olson, associate professor in computer science and engineering, who acts as chief executive. Olson was co-director of autonomous driving research at motoring corporate Toyota from March to December 2016.

Olson has been joined by two U-M alumni – Alisyn Malek and Steve Vozar, working as chief operating officer and chief technology officer, respectively. Malek previously led the innovation operation at car manufacturer General Motors.

Bryce Pilz, director of licensing at U-M Tech Transfer, U-M’s tech transfer office, said May Mobility had outperformed the average of more than four years it takes for Michigan-based startups to attract their first $500,000 in funding.

He added: “Outside of the life sciences, this is far and away the most successful startup we have had at U-M in raising that first round of funding so quickly.”

“The autonomous vehicle field marries two sectors — the auto sector that started here and the tech space that is perceived as being on the [US] west coast.”