Dave Ferguson was not a computer kid. As a boy he spent more time climbing trees, he has said in a profile published by Kea New Zealand. His father was a diplomat, so the family lived in the United States for a time, then returned to New Zealand so he could finish high school there.
At the University of Otago a lecturer, Dr Willem Labuschagne, pointed him toward computer science. Ferguson has not forgotten it. Years later he set up a scholarship at Otago in his memory.
At the University of Otago a lecturer, Dr Willem Labuschagne, pointed him toward computer science.
The next stop was Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, which he calls the Disney World of robotics. In his first year there he worked on a robot to map abandoned coal mines, inspired by a mining accident in the United States. He later wrote an algorithm that NASA uses for long-range autonomy on its Mars rovers. After Intel, in 2011 he joined Google's self-driving car project as a principal machine learning engineer. There he worked beside Jiajun Zhu, who had come through Fudan University and the University of Virginia and led perception and simulation.
What almost nobody saw coming was a smaller idea. In 2016 both men left Google. Their view was that robotics would reshape daily life within 10 to 15 years. They started with deliveries, a pared-down vehicle that carried groceries rather than people. By one TechCrunch caption the first office was an Airbnb.
Money followed fast. $92 million in January 2018, $940 million from SoftBank in 2019 at $2.7 billion, $500 million at $5 billion in 2020, and $600 million at $8.6 billion in November 2021. Kroger, Domino's and CVS signed on, and in 2020 it received the first federal autonomous exemption.
The cost arrived in two waves. In November 2022 Nuro cut about 20 percent of its staff, roughly 300 people. In May 2023 it paused commercial expansion and cut about 30 percent, around 340. In September 2024 it dropped the vehicle business and began licensing its driving software. By August 2025 it raised $203 million at $6 billion with Uber and Nvidia, a figure below its 2021 peak. In October 2025 Ferguson became co-CEO alongside Zhu. Uber and Lucid plan a robotaxi fleet of at least 20,000 vehicles over six years, with a first launch expected in 2026.
The company that was built to carry groceries now sells the driver. The boy who liked trees became the man who writes algorithms that drive on Mars, and who set aside money for the teacher who suggested it. A first-time founder can see the debt in that: someone at the start said computer science, and he is still repaying them.