An autonomous trucking company by the name of Kodiak Robotics is now planning on expanding after being able to raise $125 million. The total funding that the company was able to raise now sits at $165 million.
Kodiak Robotics Self-Driving Trucks
Kodiak Robotics is reportedly a startup developing self-driving truck technologies. This was according to the official website. It was stated that the company has just been able to raise a whopping $125 million in a recent oversubscribed series B round. This now brings the company at $165 million to date.
According to the story by VentureBeat, this tranche, which reportedly will be put toward expanding Kodiak's team, adding certain trucks to its own feet, and also growing its autonomous service capabilities. This was according to Don Burnette, the company's CEO.
Investments in the Company
It was noted that this includes certain investments from Lightspeed Venture Partners, SIP Global Partners, CRV, Battery Ventures, Harpoon Ventures, Gopher Asset Management, Muirwoods Ventures, Walleye Capital, StepStone Group, Aliya Capital Partners, and others. As of the moment, however, the NTSB is still saying that autonomous driving isn't safe.
Burnette noted that the company's series B would drive them into hyper-growth to double their team, fleet, and start scaling their business. It was noted that they would then further accelerate towards launching their own self-driving services along with their partners in the upcoming years to help address these particularly critical challenges.
Autonomous Truck Scaling
Although autonomous trucks could still face quite the challenge when it comes to commercializing at scale until certain regulatory guidelines are finally established, it was noted that the technology still has the potential to be able to reduce the total cost of trucking. The price reduction could reportedly be from $1.65 per mile to just $1.30 per mile by mid-decade. This was reportedly according to the analysis by Pitchbook.
This is perhaps why investors reportedly poured a record of a whopping $5.6 billion into certain driverless trucking companies during the initial half of this year. This then eclipsed the $4.2 billion that was invested throughout 2020.
Fully Autonomous Trucks by 2027
It was stated that the semi- and fully autonomous truck market is expected to reach about $88 billion by the year 2027. Acumen Research and Consulting recently estimated that this will grow at a compound annual growth rate of a whopping 10.1% between the year 2020 and 2027.
Kodiak, cofounded by Burnette along with Paz Eshel, a former venture capitalist, emerged in 2018. This was after leaving Google's very own self-driving project for Otto in early 2016. Aside from autonomous trucks, there are also autonomous subs being developed by companies like Bedrock to help the future of renewable energy.
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Written by Urian B.
