A startup born out of Stanford is going after Uber's self-driving-car program

drive.ai car

Another startup is going after Uber in the race to get self-driving cars on the road.

Drive.ai, a startup born out of Stanford, just raised $15 million in a new round of funding led by Grab, Uber's biggest rival in Southeast Asia. The announcement comes a few weeks after Drive.ai said it will partner with Lyft and launch a self-driving-car pilot in the Bay Area.

Drive.ai will now open an office in Singapore as part of the latest capital raise, which brings its total funding to $77 million.

“Self-driving is the global space race of our time, so we've had our eyes set on international deployment since the start," Drive.ai CEO Sameep Tandon said in a press release.

Grab previously partnered with nuTonomy, a startup born out of MIT, to launch a self-driving-car pilot in Singapore. NuTonomy has since partnered with Lyft and the two will launch a pilot in Boston before the end of the year.

Lyft has amassed several partners to aid its autonomous efforts, including Waymo and Ford. But it has yet to demonstrate its technology in a real-world setting or announce a concrete timeline for its announced pilots.

Uber has launched self-driving-car pilots in Pittsburgh and Tempe, Arizona. Uber is currently being sued by Waymo, which claims the ride-hailing giant stole intellectual property and trade secrets for its driverless efforts.

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