Led · Series C · Jul 2022

May Mobility develops and sells autonomous vehicle systems—specifically retrofitted Toyota Sienna minivans—on geofenced routes under multi-year, multi-million-dollar contracts with cities. The company focuses on B2B deployments in mid-size municipalities rather than large-scale robotaxi rollouts, which it says enables earlier path to profitability and lower burn. May Mobility has announced deployments or deals in Ann Arbor (its HQ), Arlington, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Sun City and plans to enter Contra Costa County by early 2024, with Southeast expansion expected. Management says as AV tech advances and costs fall, the company intends to expand into other segments such as trucking, logistics and robotaxis. Financially, May Mobility has raised roughly $300 million to date, including a $105 million financing announced this week, and counts Toyota and BMW among strategic backers. May Mobility develops low-speed autonomous shuttles and vehicle platforms (including modified Toyota Sienna S-AM vehicles) for public-transportation augmentation and ride-hail use. The company currently operates vehicles in five cities — Arlington, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Fishers and Hiroshima — and has about 20 S-AMs in its fleet, most in Ann Arbor. May is working with partners including Toyota, SoftBank and MONET Technologies and has begun development work to integrate its kit onto Toyota’s e-Palette platform. The startup recently completed AV pilots (for example at Hiroshima University) and plans further trials in Tokyo’s Takeshiba district. May says it will use new funding to triple corporate headcount (particularly engineering), expand U.S. and Japan deployments, and pursue driver-out operations in 2023. Its total disclosed funding to date is $194 million. May Mobility develops and operates autonomous low-speed shuttle services, with deployments in Detroit and Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Providence, Rhode Island. The company currently runs 25 autonomous shuttles across those three cities and plans to expand to roughly 25 vehicles per city to improve economics and impact. Founded in 2017, May Mobility positions itself in the transportation-as-a-service space with local shuttle fleets. The startup raised $50 million in a Series B led by Toyota, following a $22 million raise less than a year earlier. The new capital will be used to expand its AV shuttle fleet and to grow engineering and operations staff. May is working with Toyota as one of its autonomous driving providers for future open platforms and will explore pairing its technology with Toyota's e-Palette platform. May Mobility operates full-stack, low-speed autonomous vehicle fleets and provides daily public transit services for public and private customers. Its solution combines vehicle hardware and software, expert fleet operations, and a cloud-based business insights platform that monitors fleet health and ridership analytics. The company targets the $28B U.S. last-mile transportation market and currently operates commercial services in downtown Detroit, MI and Columbus, OH, with planned launches in Grand Rapids, MI and Providence, RI and additional U.S. deployments in 2019. May’s fleet has provided more than 35,000 rides in Columbus and Detroit, and the company reports it is generating revenue while collecting technical and market data. The business emphasizes scalable operations and real-world data collection to improve its technology with each mile driven. The company works with transit agencies, developers, and other partners to design and operate dependable shared mobility services. May Mobility develops and operates self-driving small shuttle fleets intended to replace existing transportation options for corporate and other clients. The company focuses on practical, route-defined autonomous solutions using currently available technology and manages fleets end-to-end, including vehicle maintenance and daily operation. Its team includes DARPA Urban Challenge participants and veterans from Ford, GM, Toyota and the University of Michigan’s automotive programs. May ran a pilot with Detroit-based Bedrock in October that the company says demonstrated its technology and service readiness. The company raised $11.5 million in seed funding and plans to use the proceeds to hire additional employees and expand coverage to more U.S. cities by the end of 2018. It intends to launch its first commercial operations later in 2018.

Participated · Series E · May 2021

24M delivers battery innovations by reinventing battery technologies and manufacturing methods through its SemiSolid™ and Unit Cell manufacturing platform. Its chemistry-agnostic design, process, and platform aim to reduce manufacturing costs while improving safety, range, performance, and recyclability. The company says its technology set addresses long-standing industry challenges in preferred energy storage products. 24M plans to accelerate commercialization and mass production of its offerings, including acquiring and opening a new R&D and pilot manufacturing plant in Rayong, Thailand. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. The recent financing brings total funding to over $500 million, supporting its push toward scaled production and market rollout. 24M develops a chemistry-agnostic SemiSolid™ manufacturing platform intended to lower the cost and improve performance of energy storage. The company has commercially demonstrated its ultra-thick SemiSolid electrode architecture with high energy density using lithium‑ion chemistry. 24M plans to adapt that platform to sodium metal batteries aimed at low‑cost, fast‑charging and wide‑temperature EV applications. It will partner with MIT and Carnegie Mellon University to apply a cell design that includes an ultra‑thick cobalt‑ and nickel‑free sodium cathode, an advanced wide‑temperature fast‑charging electrolyte developed with machine learning and high‑throughput screening, and a sodium super ionic conductor. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. Company leadership includes president and CEO Naoki Ota and Dr. JunZheng Chen, director of advanced R&D. 24M Technologies builds SemiSolid lithium‑ion cells and a redesigned manufacturing approach intended to reduce battery cost while improving performance. The company is advancing next‑generation high energy density lithium metal anode cells using its SemiSolid platform. 24M plans to combine a lithium metal anode with a SemiSolid cathode to deliver lower cost, superior power and improved energy density for electric aviation applications. The team is developing and scaling a commercial, modular pilot line for customer validation with a clear path to gigascale production capacity. A recent $9 million ARPA‑E award is intended to accelerate commercialization and rapid market entry. 24M is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., and is founded and led by industry inventors and scientists including co‑founder Dr. Yet‑Ming Chiang and President & CEO Naoki Ota. 24M commercializes its SemiSolid™ lithium‑ion manufacturing platform that mixes electrolyte with active materials to form a binder‑free, clay‑like slurry. The process eliminates significant inactive materials and capital‑intensive steps such as drying and electrolyte filling, aiming to dramatically reduce manufacturing cost. 24M says the platform delivers market‑leading price‑performance and that it has improved cell performance and safety. The company is working with licensee partners, including Kyocera and GPSC, which have expanded commercial operations. Proceeds from the financing will be used to commercialize the SemiSolid manufacturing process and expand technology development programs for grid storage and electric vehicle applications. 24M is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., and is led by industry inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs. 24M commercializes a SemiSolid lithium-ion battery design and a novel, capital-efficient manufacturing process that uses electrolyte as the processing solvent. The process eliminates steps such as drying, solvent recovery, calendaring and electrolyte filling, and reduces the need for inactive materials like copper, aluminum and separator. 24M says this approach yields a structural bill-of-materials advantage and lower manufacturing cost while enabling high energy density cell designs not previously possible. The company has used a semi-automated pilot facility to advance cell design and production readiness. 24M is targeting both the low-cost grid market and the high energy density requirements of the EV market and says it is ready to scale globally. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass.

Led · Equity · Oct 2020

LM Industries is the parent company of Local Motors, a digital vehicle manufacturer. The company provides innovative and locally relevant vehicles and mobility solutions. It is led by co-founder and CEO Jay Rogers. LM Industries raised $15M in funding from Mirai Creation Fund II (managed by SPARX Group Co., Ltd). The funding will be used to drive product development, production and deployment for Olli. Olli is described as the world’s first 3D-printed, electric, self-driving shuttle.

Participated · Series B · Jan 2019

Cinnamon AI offers an AI-powered cognitive document reader that understands intent and context and transforms the most complex unstructured business documents into database-ready content, including handwritten and text sources. Led by CEO Miku Hirano, the company focuses on building products to drive business process re-engineering for large corporations. Its platform extracts decision-ready data from a variety of document types to support enterprise workflows. Cinnamon plans to use recent funding to expand into the U.S. and to continue enhancing its AI platform. The company secured $15M in Series B equity funding to support these efforts. No operating metrics were disclosed in the article.