Moove, the vehicle-financing startup founded in Lagos by British-Nigerian entrepreneur Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi, has reached a $2.1 billion valuation after securing $250 million in fresh capital. The investment turns the firm into Africa’s newest tech unicorn as it expands beyond human-driven ride-hailing into the physical back-end for self-driving cars.

Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co. led the Series C financing, with Toyota’s Woven Capital and merchant bank Ion Pacific serving as co-leads. BlueCrest Capital Management, Sona Asset Management, and The Raptor Group also joined the round, adding to an investor list that includes BlackRock Inc., Uber Technologies Inc., Franklin Templeton, and MUFG.

The new funding will back Moove’s push into autonomous fleet management, including specialized depots known as “Nests.” These hubs act as nerve centers where driverless vehicles are charged, washed, repaired, and dispatched around the clock. To support the rollout, Moove plans to expand its autonomous mobility team by more than 220 percent, raising headcount in that unit from 150 to roughly 500 workers by the end of the year.

From Lagos streets to global autonomy

Founded in 2020, Moove built its core business by financing cars for ride-hail drivers who lacked access to traditional bank loans. The company now manages roughly 42,000 vehicles across 29 cities in 13 countries, generating $420 million in annualized recurring revenue. Its growth has relied on a mix of direct market entries and acquisitions, including Brazil’s Kovi and Japan’s Tokyo Taxi.

Now, the startup is applying its operational template to driverless transit. Moove already runs third-party fleet operations for Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo in Phoenix and Miami, with an upcoming launch planned for London. “Every major shift in tech comes down to physical infrastructure,” Delano said. “The internet required data centers. AI required compute. Autonomy requires physical fleets, charging hubs, maintenance, and around-the-clock operations in every major city.”

Delano noted that Moove began with a basic observation on the streets of Lagos: passenger demand was huge, but drivers could not scale their business without unified access to vehicles, funding, and maintenance. “Five years later, that simple idea has turned into a global business,” he said, citing the company’s regional headquarters in the United Arab Emirates as its base for global driverless operations.

Institutional investors target physical operations in autonomous transit

For institutional backers, the appeal lies in the operational complexity required to keep driverless cars on the road. Software powers the vehicle, but human crews and physical real estate keep the fleet moving.

“As self-driving transit moves from test tracks to public roads, the real bottleneck is the physical operating system behind it,” said Ali Eid AlMheiri, executive director of diversified assets at Mubadala. He added that the investment aligns with the UAE’s broader push to build out tech infrastructure and diversify its economy.

Betty Lee, principal at Woven Capital, pointed out that scaling autonomous fleets is as much a logistics puzzle as a software challenge. “Very few fleet operators have proven they can run complex vehicle networks across several continents at this speed,” Lee said.