Applied EV finalising $57.8m series B round co-led by NRF, Barrenjoey
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The news: Autonomous vehicle developer Applied EV (AEV) is finalising a USD40 million ($57.8 million) series B funding round co-led by the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation and Barrenjoey.
The numbers: The National Reconstruction Fund’s $30.7 million investment makes up the bulk of the funding round, which has also attracted investment from Japan Post Capital and Barrenjoey.
The context: Founded in 2015, the Melbourne-based company's main offering is the sixth generation of Blanc Robot, a cabinless electric vehicle with a flat chassis that can be modified to suit the logistics needs of customers. This can range from compact utility and delivery vehicles to freight trucks.
The first tranche of the funding round was completed before Christmas, with the second tranche “due to close pretty soon”, Applied EV CEO Julian Broadbent told Capital Brief.
The funds will be used to restructure the company into “AEV 2.0”. The company will look for “an end point for most of the engineering activity for new product” and enter its deployment phase focused on sales and customer deployment activities.
Engineering activity will increasingly focus on software development for monitoring and managing fleets of autonomous vehicles. This will include the development of “effectively an app store” for third party providers to build on AEV’s software platform for the specific needs of customers.
Broadbent said the company expects to hire “anywhere between up to 30, maybe even up to another 50” employees, with some team members to be "deployed on some international assignments to get first hand interaction with the customers”.
“It’s not just hiring a few sales guys, it’s actually building out a proper commercial team that can generate the pipeline, execute it and support it,” Broadbent said.
Japan Post Capital’s investment in Applied EV was announced in December, with the two companies working to deploy the vehicles in regional areas which may otherwise struggle to find staff to meet its logistics needs.
Applied EV does not plan to significantly increase its manufacturing operations and instead focuses on installing its technology on automotive platforms supplied by Suzuki.
“For example, we have 100 vehicles in our building today that we are installing our technology and assembling here. Going forward, I could see us continuing to do about that number, but I don't see us being a manufacturer of trucks and vehicles here, but more focusing on building technology in the software," Broadbent said.
The company is primarily pursuing export opportunities as Australia is "trailing the rest of the world” in having the appropriate regulatory and safety settings for the deployment of autonomous road logistics.
This investment in a transport sector company means the NRF has now made a funding commitment in each of its seven priority areas.
What they said: “Really pleasing to see that now the NRF has actually covered off on all seven of the priority areas in terms of making investments," NRF CEO David Gall told Capital Brief.
"But actually, when you look at Applied EV and why the NRF [invested], it actually ticks a lot of boxes for us,” Gall said.
“Not only is this important industrial capability… it's taken something that Australia used to be known for, in terms of the manufacturing of vehicles that actually introduced the smarts of the software and the electronics capability here, to create what I think will be a really leading autonomous vehicle for logistics and off-road".
The source: NRF media release
