ALSO, the Rivian spinoff behind the TM-B e-bike, has closed a $150 million Series D round, according to the funding announcement it put out Wednesday.
The money is aimed almost entirely at autonomy. ALSO said the round accelerates development of its autonomous vehicle platform and lets it work on multiple autonomous form factors at once, covering both goods and passengers moving around cities. Those vehicles will lean on the EV architecture the company already built for the TM-B and for the TM-Q, the commercial delivery quad. Chris Yu, co-founder and president, said congestion and cost per trip are the same problems whether a human is steering or not.
If you have been following ALSO, the TM-B is the interesting part of the story so far. It is a pedal-by-wire bike with no mechanical link between the pedals and the wheel, a modular top frame that swaps between a single seat, a cargo setup and a bench in a few seconds without tools, up to 100 miles of range on the 808 Wh pack, 28 mph pedal-assisted top speed, regenerative braking, and a removable battery that charges over USB-C at 240 watts and doubles as a power bank. Launch Edition and Performance are $4,500, the Standard is $3,500. Rivian sells it through the Gear Shop, so plenty of owners have already seen it in the configurator flow.
Launch Edition bikes have started shipping in the U.S., and pre-orders and configuration recently opened for the Performance and Standard models, with first deliveries this fall.
This follows the $200 million Series C that ALSO closed earlier this year, led by Greenoaks with Prysm participating and a strategic investment from DoorDash attached. That round came with a multi-year agreement to develop and deploy autonomous delivery vehicles with DoorDash at scale. Amazon is the other named commercial partner, and it is already lined up to take one of the quads.
Jay Park at Prysm pointed to the firm backing Rivian early and said ALSO is running the same vertically integrated playbook at a smaller scale. RJ Scaringe sits on ALSO’s board.
No date yet for showing any of the autonomous vehicles publicly. The Performance and Standard deliveries this fall are the next thing on the calendar.
