Wow, this summer has not been sleepy in the autonomous truck world: A $200M fundraise for Gatik! PlusAI going public! AV trucking in Japan! Applied Intuition in the Middle East! Einride and DAF Partnering! Kodiak Triples! Aurora putting 200 AV trucks on the road! Waabi crusades forward on their AI-approach! Volvo Autonomous Solutions leveraging the Aurora Driver to run freight!
Dig in, folks. There’s lots of interesting goings on…..
GATIK: ENJOYING A HEFTY SERIES D ROUND
In August, Gatik announced $200 million in financing. The Series D round was led by Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), with participation from Millennium Management, ARK Invest, Intact Private Capital and others.
Gatik has built a highly sophisticated business in autonomous freight, with more than $600 million in contracted revenue, 85,000 fully driverless orders completed, and 99% on-time delivery across its operations. Its trucks move goods across high-frequency regional networks between distribution centers and stores, giving customers a reliable way to add capacity, improve service levels and keep products moving.
“This round, led by some of the world’s leading financial institutions, is a clear validation of Gatik’s commercial leadership in autonomous freight,” said Gautam Narang, CEO and Co-founder of Gatik. “We have built Gatik with real revenue, deep customer demand, and AI-driven autonomous technology proven every day in live supply chains. This round gives us the capital to scale with speed and discipline, serve the world’s largest companies, and define the future of autonomous freight.”
“Autonomous freight is transforming the global logistics industry, making it more efficient and reliable,” said Abdulla Al-Kuwari, Head of Industrials at QIA. “QIA is committed to supporting next-generation solutions providers like Gatik that are shaping the future of freight infrastructure.”
“We’ve long believed autonomous freight has the potential to improve the efficiency and reliability of supply chains,” said Byron Knight, President of Koch Disruptive Technologies. “What we’re seeing today is autonomy moving beyond a promising technology into real-world commercial operations. Gatik has demonstrated a practical approach to that transition, and we look forward to supporting the company’s continued growth.”
Koch Disruptive Technologies first invested in Gatik in 2021. As Celeste Dauner, Managing Director of KDT put it, “Our decision to invest again at this stage reflects our conviction in Gatik’s model and the significant opportunity ahead for autonomous freight.”
“We are no longer debating the potential of autonomous trucking. This category will be led by the companies that have proven technology, rigorous safety standards and the commercial discipline to operate at scale,” said Justin Smith-Lorenzetti, Managing Director, Intact Private Capital. “Gatik has built that foundation over years of operating inside complex customer supply chains. We have tripled our commitment with this latest round, driven, by the conviction that Gatik has the execution record, customer traction and technical maturity to be the leader in autonomous freight across North America.”
Key announced customers include Georgia-Pacific, KBX, Kroger, Loblaws, PepsiCo, and Tyson Foods.
In Canada, fifty driverless trucks are operating in Ontario supporting 300 Loblaws stores across the Toronto area. Another fifty driverless trucks are supporting PepsiCo operations in the U.S. Arizona and Texas.
According to Gatik, this latest financing round will help the company expand their model aimed at high-frequency regional routes that connect distribution centers and stores, noting that “these routes are time-sensitive, operationally complex and essential to keeping shelves stocked as customer expectations shift toward faster, more predictable access to everyday products.”
I’m noticing that in articles and podcasts, PepsiCo spokespersons are at times touting their autonomous operations… without mentioning Gatik at all. This is a good sign for the overall truck autonomy space. Compared to any autonomy provider, a company like PepsiCo championing autonomous operations has a much greater impact on markets and public sentiment.
Check it out: Gatik’s real time fleet operations dashboard is now live on their website.
PLUS.AI: SPAC WHEELS ARE TURNING
PlusAI is “pioneering AI-based virtual driver software for factory-built autonomous trucks.” The company is working with global commercial vehicle makers and ecosystem partners including TRATON GROUP’s Scania, MAN, and International brands, Hyundai Motor Company, Iveco Group, NVIDIA, Ryder, Bosch, DSV, and Goodyear.
In August, PlusAI announced updated commercial readiness metrics for the first half of 2026, showing continued progress toward the commercial deployment of factory-built autonomous trucks targeted for 2027. These factory-built vehicles will come from International, TRATON’s U.S. brand.
International and Ryder are running a commercial autonomous fleet trial, operating a 600-mile route in Texas on a daily basis.
PlusAI’s Commercial Readiness Metrics are similar to those offered by other developers.
· Safety Case Readiness measures progress toward completing the engineering evidence required to support safe commercial deployment.
· Remote Assistance Free Trips measures the percentage of trips completed without remote operator intervention, reflecting operational maturity and scalability.
· Autonomous Miles Percentage measures the percentage of miles driven autonomously during commercial operations.
The 2026 data reveals that:
· Safety Case Readiness has reached 93.4%, compared to 90.1% in the second half of 2025
· Remote Assistance Free Trips increased to 85.2%, compared to 79% previously.
· Autonomous Miles Percentage is at 99.8%, compared to prior results of 99.2%
Chart showing PlusAI’s Safety Case Readiness, Remote Assistance Free Trips, and Autonomous Mile Percent metrics improving from 2024 H1 through 2026 H1, alongside commercial launch targets. The PlusAI website provides a chart of results since 2024, showing steady progress.
PlusAI expects to achieve 100% safety case readiness in 2027: a key milestone vital to the release of PlusAI products to customers.
Anticipation is high for PlusAI’s public market debut. The company will merge with Texas Ventures Acquisition III Corp, a special purpose acquisition company with financial backing from funds managed by Yorkville Advisors Global, LP, a global asset manager that has completed transactions valued at over $9 billion since its founding in 2001.
The SPAC announcement notes that PlusAI has generated $25 million of revenue through its HyperFoundry platform and is targeting an aggregate of $40–50 million of contracted revenue in 2026. So there’s revenue now and in the near term from HyperFoundry, with future revenue resulting from their autonomy system SuperDrive, which will provide long-term upside through a recurring Driver-as-a-Service model targeted for commercial launch in 2027.
David Liu, Co‑Founder and CEO of PlusAI, said, “This transaction validates a year of significant execution and operational milestones for PlusAI. We are operating autonomous freight routes in Texas today, expanding our OEM partnerships, and successfully monetizing the proprietary data, models and simulation capabilities we have built over the past decade. HyperFoundry is generating revenue today while SuperDrive advances toward commercial launch in 2027. We believe this combination of near-term revenue, a capital-efficient software business model, and a clear path to large-scale autonomous trucking deployment uniquely positions PlusAI for long-term growth.”
Troy Rillo, CEO of Texas Ventures III, said, “PlusAI is a leader in autonomy and is positioned to provide one of the leading solutions to make autonomous trucking a commercial reality. PlusAI pairs real revenue today with a credible path to large-scale deployment, while remaining highly disciplined and capital-efficient. Our conviction is reflected in the capital we are committing alongside the transaction. We are excited to partner with David and the team to bring PlusAI to the public markets.”
The SPAC is expected to close later this year.
KODIAK: ROCKIN’ THE OFF-ROAD HAULING MARKET WITH TRIPLE TRAILERS
Kodiak AI pioneered the off-road space for frack sand hauling and it continues to grow. Atlas Energy Solutions and Kodiak AI are now expanding their autonomous truck fleet in the Permian Basin, adding a second driverless load-out point along Atlas’s 42-mile Dune Express sand conveyor. The partners plan to grow the Kodiak-enabled fleet from the current 28 trucks to 100 by mid-2027, with public-road operations targeted for early 2027. Frack sand moves both off-road and on-highway, depending on the locations of facilities.
Atlas now runs driverless trucks concurrently from depots in Texas and New Mexico, roughly 90 minutes apart, widening its delivery reach across these very active oil and gas basins. Since deployments began in 2024, the fleet has completed around 7,000 loads across 15 routes, hauling more than 450,000 tons of sand and logging over 23,500 driverless hours in the first quarter of 2026 alone.
This summer, Kodiak announced that it’s trucks delivered 176 loads of sand in a single day, a record across 18 months of driverless operations with Atlas.
And, earlier this year, the partners also completed the first autonomous triple-trailer trucking operation, hauling a combined loaded weight of more than 135 tons. David Silver, leader of planning and controls at Kodiak AI, wrote an interesting piece about the engineering challenges encounters in this endeavor.
Kodiak’s “triples” being owned and operated by Atlas Sands are “unlike any other autonomous vehicle on the road today. They represent one of Physical AI’s most novel and compelling breakthroughs. From the front bumper to the rearmost trailer, the entirety of the vehicle stretches 50 meters, more than half the length of a football field. The loads are enormous: when full, the whole vehicle configuration can weigh 275,000 pounds, more than the weight of a fully loaded Boeing 757,” said Mr. Silver.
Human drivers capable of driving triples are in short supply. But for Atlas, triple trailers greatly increase its asset utilization, able to haul “50 percent more sand than double trailers, a major efficiency gain.”
“Achieving this feat required training AI to calculate and manage the compounding physical uncertainties involved in safely and consistently transporting triples,” said Mr. Silver.
Perception is extremely challenging across a 50-meter rig, especially with complex turns and narrow roads. Kodiak enhanced their perception system.
Planning is also tricky. Trucks pass through gates and encounter cattle guards. “The trick is guiding a 50-meter vehicle through a six-meter gap. The planning system must account for the path of all three trailers simultaneously and position the vehicle so that every segment passes cleanly through the opening,” according to Mr. Silver.
He added that starting and stopping this configuration requires ‘choreography’ because “brake application cascades backward from the tractor through the dollies and trailers. It takes about one-and-a-half seconds for brake pressure to reach the rear, and our AI-powered autonomous driving system must compensate for this delay. Braking pressure and timing must be precise.”
And there’s the mass of the combination, which varies with the task – sometimes the rig is empty, other times fully loaded. This can vary from 275K pounds to only 75K pounds. So, he said, “Our autonomous driving system must understand the weight it carries on any given job. Braking harder than a lighter load needs introduces instability throughout a triple-trailer configuration. Brake less than a heavier load requires, and the trucks might overshoot their desired stopping point.” His team created a mass estimator that determines the weight of each load on each axle. “We then track how well our actual braking profiles compare with what the system expected, and our operations team is notified if that performance falls outside a specified performance threshold.”
Since launching triples in February, the Kodiak Driver has carried more than 1,400 loads in this configuration, using the Western Star 49X truck platform.
To my knowledge, in 2023 Hexagon was first to field triples in autonomous mode in support to Mineral Resources in Australia. Kodiak appears to be taking this to another level.
AURORA: THE BIG DOG IS GETTING LOTS OF NEW TRUCKS
Aurora has been running autonomous trucks since early last year, initially with a “safety observer.” Based on announcements in July, they will be in full human-less mode going forward.
The new fleet, based on the International® LT® Series vehicle, is powered by Aurora’s next-generation hardware. The OEM, International, sold Aurora stock trucks which Aurora retrofitted for autonomous operations.
Aurora says the new hardware is more powerful and built to last one million miles.
Prior to launch, Aurora closed its Safety Case, its well-established bar for operations on public roads without a person behind the wheel, for the new truck and hardware.
In Aurora’s 2nd Quarter results presented in July, a key point was “Aurora is already fully allocated to exit the year with 200 driverless trucks in operation and is in negotiations with a number of customers for its Driver as a Service business model for 2027 and beyond.”
Aurora will transition from Transport-as-a-Service to Driver-as-a-Service next year, based on statements from Aurora and their OEM partner Volvo Trucks.
VOLVO AUTONOMOUS SOLUTIONS: AN AUTONOMY ECOSYSTEM
In parallel, Volvo Autonomous Solutions has integrated the Aurora tech into Volvo vehicles to launch “Autona / freight.” VAS describes this as an “entire ecosystem necessary for safe and efficient autonomous transportation.” Further, “This includes uptime management, operational support, and terminals.
Their pitch is that, by managing all these complex elements, Autona / freight simplifies a freight carrier’s step into autonomy, in terms of incorporating this advanced technology into your business without managing the operational complexity.
VAS is now running freight between Dallas to Oklahoma City. Next year, their operations will transition to factory built autonomous trucks from Volvo.
WAABI: ALL AI, ALL THE TIME
Waabi champions an AI-forward approach to autonomy. Per their website, “There are two distinct frontiers of generalization in self-driving. The first is the ability to generalize across environments and behaviors. This means the virtual driver should be able to apply its knowledge and skills safely across very different Operational Design Domains, from highways to dense urban streets, across different traffic patterns, road geometries, and driving behaviors. The second frontier is the ability to generalize across embodiments. This means the virtual driver should be able to seamlessly transfer to an entirely new vehicle platform with different sensors, control system, and physical characteristics. Historically, this has been one of the most difficult challenges in autonomous driving, with each new platform requiring very extensive engineering, data collection, retraining, and validation.”
According to the company, the Waabi Driver AI brain is “designed to enable true embodiment generalization and automatically adapt to completely different vehicles, just like humans do.”
To test this out, Waabi collaborated with their partners at Volvo Autonomous Solutions to integrate the Waabi Driver onto the Volvo VNL Autonomous truck, which the Waabi AI had never “seen” before. The result: “the Volvo VNL Autonomous, powered by the Waabi Driver, was fully performant from the very first mile. It drove autonomously across both highways and complex surface streets safely, confidently, and smoothly, just like the best human drivers.”
Waabi has many skeptics, the most prominent being Aurora. The debate will rage on for some time to come.
EINRIDE: DAF OEM PARTNERSHIP
DAF and Einride AB partner to bring autonomous trucking to DAF’s next-generation vehicles.
Einride AB is an unique entity in the autonomous trucking space, offering freight vehicles that are both autonomous and electric. The company went public in June.
In August, global truck manufacturer DAF Trucks and Einride announced a joint initiative to integrate the Einride Driver autonomous driving system into DAF’s electric truck platform.
Initially, Einride and DAF, together with the Dutch lab TNO will collaborate on defining and testing the integration of Einride’s autonomous drive system within DAF’s EV truck.
This team is also working closely with type approval authorities to ensure the platform is compliant for future expansion onto public roads. Initial tests and validation of key interfaces are being conducted this year, and in 2027 they plan to integrate Einride’s autonomous driving software onto the DAF platform to evaluate interfaces and perform functional testing.
DAF offers electric trucks ranging from a 12-tonne XB Electric for city distribution to the XG and XG+ Electric for longer haul applications.
PACCAR is DAF’s parent company. PACCAR has extensive experience with AV trucks via their North American Autonomous Vehicle Platform program. PACCAR also has an production partnership with Aurora.
“By leveraging DAF’s decades of manufacturing excellence and market strength, we can expedite the global scale-up of Einride’s autonomous technology,” said Henkrik Green, Chief Technology Officer at Einride. “This collaboration validates our vehicle-agnostic approach to autonomy and brings us one step closer to deploying safe, scalable Level 4 autonomy at commercial scale.”
“This collaboration is a testament to DAF’s commitment to innovation and future-proofing the logistics sector,” said Jeroen van den Oetelaar, DAF Trucks’ Chief Engineer and member of the board. “By combining our premium truck platform with leading autonomous technology, we are actively shaping a more efficient, safer, and sustainable freight ecosystem.
APPLIED INTUITION AND HUMAIN: DEPLOYMENT IN SAUDI ARABIA
Applied Intuition and HUMAIN recently announced they will build “a unified autonomous logistics network at national scale, deploying thousands of autonomous trucks across key Saudi logistics corridors by 2030.” The companies will focus on autonomous trucking first, laying the foundation for “the largest autonomous trucking network in the world, and then expand into logistics, robotaxis, ports, mining, manufacturing, agriculture, construction, and other industries in the future.”
Applied Intuition’s Self-Driving System, already operating on Level 4 trucks, together with Vehicle OS and supporting vehicle intelligence offerings, will serve as the technology foundation for the collaboration with HUMAIN.
“Autonomous trucking will change the economics of moving goods and people,” said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN. “Our goal with Applied Intuition is to make this region the first to deploy autonomous trucking at scale. Thousands of autonomous trucks operating around the clock can transform the speed, cost, and capacity of our logistics network, with a multiplier effect across economies. We have an opportunity to set a global benchmark for autonomous freight.”
“Physical AI is the next frontier of intelligent infrastructure, and Saudi Arabia has the ambition to deploy it at unprecedented scale,” said Qasar Younis, co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition. “Our vision with Applied Intuition is to bring intelligence to a billion machines around the world, and this is exactly the kind of national-scale deployment we built our platform to enable. We’re proud to partner with HUMAIN to help create the future of physical AI in the country.”
Applied Intuition’s end-to-end physical AI stack includes a multi-domain autonomy model that scales across industries, such as trucking, mining, agriculture, construction, and more.
At this early stage, there are few details as to which freight carriers will participate and on which routes. Are will HUMAIN stand up a new freight carrier business?
Also, there has been no indication that Applied Intuition is working with a truck manufacturer, so their approach will likely entail the purchase of stock trucks and then upfitting them for autonomy. This is a valid approach but it adds cost to the vehicle platform.
T2: LEVEL 4 TRUCKING IN JAPAN
As noted in my most recent article, autonomous trucking is coming to Japan via a new company called T2. They aim to operate long-haul transport on the Tokyo-Osaka expressway where the highway agency is constructing AV Priority Lanes.
Earlier this year their vehicle ran autonomously from Ayase to Kobe, a journey of 550 km. T2’s autonomy is sourced from PlusAI. Their timeline shows L4 operations beginning next year, with 500 vehicles operating by 2030. T2 will purchase L4-redundant chassis from truck manufacturers and upfit their AV tech to operate as Transportation-as-a-Service.
Disclaimer: Richard Bishop is an Advisor to and/or a share holder in the following companies: Aurora, Gatik, PlusAI.