If fixing the factors of autonomous driving have been A question Of money, it’d have been clear upd sizey Prior to now. That’s The primary argument of Don Burnette, co-founder and CEO of autonomous trucking startup Kodiak Robotics, which has increaseed its enterprise and hit milestones with a fraction of the funds that hugeger gamers like Waymo have.
Over the previous yr, Kodiak has launched enterprise pilots and companionships with Ceva Logistics and US Xpress, two huge trucking and logistics corporations; begun using two new autonomous freight lanes outdoors of Texas and has raised a $125 million Collection B, bringing its complete funding to $165 million since 2018.
Definitely one of many few particular personal autonomous car corporations Out there on the market, Kodiak lives by the mantra of doing extra with much less. Final yr, Burnette informed us Kodiak might deploy a enterprise-scale operation for $500 million. That’s about 10% of what Waymo has raised And fewer than 25% of TuSimple’s IPO.
Kodiak Continues to be aiming for that objective and has now secured a popularity for primarytaining An reliable stability sheet and A great tighter Think about chasing self-driving vans, and solely self-driving vans. Ancompletely different particular person can clear up The completely different autonomy factors.
Ancompletely different particular person Can additionally clear up The factors of constructing sensors and labeling knowledge, Based mostly on Burnette, who relies upon on third events for such factors. In Kodiak’s eyes, constructing lidar in-house and spending time and assets on labeling knowledge is nothing however an costly distraction from Making a protected and viable go-to-market method.
“I’m not seeing as a lot negativity Throughout the markets as I’m listening to publicly, and …….