Toyota announced that it is committing $500 M to Joby Aviation, above and beyond its existing commitments. The press release states that the this commitment brings Toyota’s total investment to $894 M!
One of the biggest challenges in robotics has been the huge amounts of capital required. Often that capital need leads to selling the company to a larger, established business, as Cruise sold to GM and Zoox sold to Amazon. Alternatively, some companies bring on larger investors without selling the company wholesale, as seems to be the case here.
The announcement is unusually transparent about the mechanics of the investment. The money is split into two tranches, neither of which will be invested immediately. Toyota will invest one tranche before the end of the year, and the other tranche next year. Toyota is subjecting the investments to various milestones, including regulatory approval. This form of capital-staging is typical for large investments, but often glossed over in the big press announcements.
Joby was part of a wave of eVOTL SPACs a few years ago. Those companies made aggressive predictions, which have been hard to meet. But the hardest part of robotics development is raising the money to keep going, and Joby seems to be successful at that. The rest will come eventually.
David Silver 