Mobility startup PORT raises £12.1m led by EBRD and Balnord
This article covers PORT, a London mobility startup, which has raised €14.5m (about £12.1m) in a growth funding round to develop AI-powered autonomous delivery robots. The funding supports a development-stage robotics programme that uses sensor data from PORT’s existing courier network and microhubs to train autonomous systems for urban last-mile logistics.
London mobility startup PORT has raised €14.5m (about £12.1m) in a growth funding round to develop AI-powered autonomous delivery robots using data gathered from its existing courier network. The capital, led by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Balnord, supports a development-stage robotics programme that relies on real delivery journeys to train navigation systems rather than immediate commercial roll-out.
Why it matters
PORT’s raise is notable because it ties investment in autonomy to an operating urban logistics business. Rather than start with a fleet of trial robots, PORT is harvesting street-level data from active couriers — a pragmatic approach that could lower the cost and complexity of training autonomous systems while keeping human-operated services running. The distinction is important: collecting sensor data on real routes is useful for machine learning, but it is not the same as proving a robot can complete deliveries safely and reliably in city environments.
Inside the product
PORT runs 24 microhubs across London, Manchester and Birmingham and operates a 3,500-strong e-bike fleet as part of an e-bike subscription and charging business that serves more than 50,000 couriers. Some bikes are fitted with Nvidia-powered cameras and lidar that record kerbs, cyclists, drop-off points and atypical situations encountered on delivery journeys.
Footage uploads automatically when bikes return to hubs and is used to train what PORT calls its AI Driver. Lidar provides distance measurements that complement visual data from cameras, together creating richer training material to help systems recognise objects and interpret the space around a delivery destination. PORT’s hubs therefore function both as logistics infrastructure and as collection points for the dataset feeding its robotics work.
PORT’s robot programme is explicitly at the development stage and not in commercial deployment. The company says the new funding will help develop autonomous delivery technology on top of its existing business rather than replace courier operations.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Balnord, with participation from new and existing investors. The €14.5m injection brings PORT’s total funding to about €29m following earlier pre-seed and seed rounds. The involvement of a public development bank like the EBRD signals institutional interest in data-led approaches to urban mobility and logistics.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Kamil Suda, chief executive at PORT, said:
Robotised logistics does not start with the robot, but with the infrastructure, operations and data needed to make robotics work in the real world.
Suda’s framing underlines the company strategy: use an established courier network and microhub footprint as the foundation for building autonomous capabilities, rather than attempting to substitute that network immediately with robot deliveries.
The bigger picture
PORT’s approach sits alongside other UK and European experiments in autonomous mobility that are testing different operating environments and business models. For example, Aurrigo recently won funding from the UK Freight Innovation Fund for a port shuttle trial — a use case with distinct operational constraints compared with street-level courier deliveries. Each project is at a different procedural and technical stage.
Whether PORT’s courier-data-led route can translate into a practical, commercially viable robot delivery service remains to be seen. For now, the company is betting that coupling an existing logistics operation with focused data capture offers a lower-risk path to training autonomous systems than building a robotic fleet from scratch.
The deal also reflects continued interest from institutional and private investors in mobility innovation across the UK and Europe, where city logistics and last-mile delivery remain high-priority areas for efficiency, emissions reduction and urban planning.
They've invested in PORT
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