From ride-hailing apps to driverless car technology, transportation startups have attracted unprecedented sums of investment capital from auto manufacturers in recent years. In the past few quarters, that trend has been accelerating.

Subscribe to the 附近上门 Daily

An analysis of 附近上门 data shows that since the beginning of 2019, the world鈥檚 largest car and truck manufacturers have led financing rounds valued at more than $6 billion. Over that period, they鈥檝e participated in more than 50 deals for several million dollars and up, indicating an expanded willingness to pump significant sums into rounds.

鈥淚t has been a continuation of the trends for many of the automakers that have been particularly active over the past few years,鈥� said , a partner at Detroit-based transport venture firm . 鈥淚n 2019 and 2020, however, it has been interesting to see a few automakers鈥攑articularly those in Asia鈥攁ggressively ramping up their innovation efforts.”

Below, we take a more detailed look at where Big Auto is putting its capital, which companies are spending the most and where the current investment path is headed.

Hot Sectors, Big Rounds

First, let鈥檚 look at where the money鈥檚 going. The sectors driving away with the largest sums of automaker capital include autonomous driving technology, electric cars, batteries and ride-hailing.

We break out the largest funding recipients in Big Auto-led rounds in the chart below. (See full list of.)

For the most part, the same subsectors have been attracting automaker interest for years, but the funding dynamics have changed some in recent quarters.

In particular, we鈥檙e seeing more partnerships and joint investments involving multiple automakers. Examples include 鈥檚 participation in a $1.15 billion May round for 鈥檚 self-driving unit, , and Volkswagen鈥檚 $2.6 billion round for -backed .聽 Even longtime rivals and BMW are teaming up by launching a .

鈥淚鈥檓 not sure 5 to 10 years ago we would have imagined Ford and Volkswagen coming together to collaborate on electric and autonomous vehicles, or Daimler and BMW鈥檚 collaboration on mobility services,鈥� Stallman said.

However, as the true cost of launching electric and autonomous vehicles鈥攁nd competing against and on mobility services鈥攈as come into greater clarity, these partnerships make quite a bit of sense.

Another broad trend is a move toward components developers. The years 2016 to 2018 were active for acquiring full-stack autonomous vehicle technology companies, Stallman noted. But more recently, automakers are turning their attention to enabling and component technologies that align with in-house architectures. This isn鈥檛 broadly reflected in the largest deals chart above, but looking at a , it鈥檚 a more visible trend.

Most Active Investors

There鈥檚 wide variation among automakers in startup round counts. Several are, on average, participating in more than one sizable deal a month. Others are more sporadic.

Below, we take a look at the most active by deal count since the beginning of last year:

One key takeaway is that we鈥檙e seeing more startup capital coming from large auto manufacturers in Asia.

in particular has upped its game. The Korean auto giant wasn鈥檛 much involved in the startup space before 2017, according to 附近上门 data. In the last few years, however, the company has backed at least 35 rounds, including 18 since the beginning of 2019.

, meanwhile, tied with BMW as the second most active investor. The count for Toyota included several supergiant rounds of $100 million.

It鈥檚 also worth pointing out companies not in the rankings. , for instance, hasn鈥檛 been doing much startup investing, presumably preferring to innovate in-house. is also not active in venture-stage investing, nor are France鈥檚 or Japan鈥檚 and .

The Road Ahead

While automakers did a lot of startup investing in 2019, they didn鈥檛 do much acquiring.

There were a few deals: Honda bought Drivemode, a Silicon Valley developer of smartphone apps for drivers, in its first startup acquisition to date; Tesla snapped up , a computer vision startup; and PSA Group acquired , a platform for car rentals and parking it had previously backed.

Big Auto is, however, increasingly competing with Big Tech in the transport space. Just last week, for instance, bought , a developer of technology with applications in the automotive space, and over the summer picked up , a developer of autonomous driving software. also has made some transport acquisitions, as have Uber and other ride-hailing players.

Interest from Big Tech is a concern, as the most valuable technology companies are worth many multiples more than the biggest automakers, making M&A an unlevel playing field.

That said, automakers鈥� investment activity shows they鈥檙e serious about keeping abreast of innovation in spaces that impact them by putting more money than ever toward stakes in startups, even if they鈥檙e not buying them whole.

Main photo courtesy of Florian Steciuk via Unsplash.

Ride-hailing companies don’t make money. It’s nearly a law of business. I think that we can add another, related writ to the first, namely that autonomous driving startups always need another billion dollars.

Subscribe to the 附近上门 Daily

Or more, as we learned today on the news that has picked up $2.6 billion in what “capital and assets” including a $1 billion primacy investment, a $500 million secondary buy of shares from Ford, among other transactions in the VW-led deal.

You have heard of Argo AI (we’ve covered it here, and here), but I doubt that you knew the scale of capital that the group has needed to power its operations. For example, Argo raised $1 billion in commitments from before the current capital event.

Argo is worth around $7 billion after the transaction.

The new funds mean that Argo, one player in the realm of autonomous driving, is closer to $4 billion in capital raised than it is to $3 billion if I’m adding correctly (there’s some nuance to the deal structure). And what strikes my memory is how that sum isn’t shocking when we consider other huge deals in the niche.

Here’s a quick rundown of some recent deals in the autonomous sector:

• $100 million for LiDar technology in聽 . The San Francisco-based company has now raised $250 million to date.
• $1.15 billion for , part of the General Motors world. The recent transaction follows a , and several smaller investments. The firm’s total capital raised is, if we’re adding correctly this early on a Friday, around $5.5 billion.
• $1 billion for , which had previously found financing from Uber’s own coffers. That became ruinous, so Uber found friends to share the load.
• $940 million for , a company building a “self-driving vehicle made for local goods transportation” picked up nearly $1 billion in February, 2019. This time it was SoftBank money of all things. But what’s clear is that there are folks in the autonomous driving world willing to remove humans entirely from cars. That’s actually cool.
• $530 million for , a San Francisco-based autonomous driving startup that has now raised $690 million after counting its huge . The firm later into its coffers.

Toss in and the picture becomes even more crowded. Bear in mind that all the above rounds are merely the $100 million or greater rounds invested into autonomous driving companies since the start of 2019. Loosen the rules, say, adding rounds between $50 million and $100 million, and you can find even more deals.

All this to say that the venture-backed and corporate-sponsored bet on self-driving technology is getting longer and longer each day. And so far as I can tell from where I sit, only has managed to begin anything approaching .

How long these bets can continue before any player in the space can show even a partial return on investment in other than mark-up terns isn’t clear. But the answer as far as today goes is one word: longer.

Update: Luminar’s total funds raised was updated after publication, per the company’s own information.

Illustration: .