Jennifer van der Kleut

NuTonomy, a self-driving car startup that is backed by Ford Motor Co., announced today it has raised $16 million in funding, which it says will help them achieve their goal of having autonomous taxis on the streets of Singapore by this fall.

Naturally, the Singapore government is one of the big investors, along with major investment firm Highland Capital.

NuTonomy spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2013, founded by PhD graduates Karl Iagnemma (CEO) and Emilio Frazzoli (CTO). Since then, NuTonomy has garnered a reputation as being one of the leading companies in the race toward driverless cars.

Now, CEO Karl Iagnemma says this latest round of funding will help them dramatically “accelerate [their] progress—more people and more cars,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

NuTonomy is just one on a list of eight companies working on self-driving technology that want to bring it to the streets of Singapore. The government asked for proposals last year, and eight companies submitted proposals–among which were NuTonomy, Uber and BMW.

“We are inviting companies and research institutions to test-bed their technology and concepts here, in real-life, mixed-use traffic conditions,” Singapore’s Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Transport Kin Keong Pang said in a statement.

Perhaps in a jab at the regulatory back-and-forth happening in the U.S. right now, Pang added, “We are contributing financial resources in these partnerships and we are able to fast-track regulatory and other administrative approvals, and get the trials and test-beds up and running quickly and with minimum fuss.”

TechCrunch explains, NuTonomy manufactures equipment that is used to retrofit existing vehicles and turn them into driverless ones. They are currently using retrofitted Mitsubishi iMiev electric cars, and are expecting to also use Renault Zoe EVs in its autonomous cab service later this year, the Wall Street Journal reports.

TechCrunch reports, NuTonomy is also currently testing cars in Michigan and in the U.K., where they are partnering with Jaguar Land Rover, among others.

Most recently, NuTonomy gained a lot of attention when it ran a test program for an autonomous shuttle operating in an office park that could be summoned by an app. Representatives said the amount of data gathered by the program was incredibly valuable.