Autonomous trucking company Gatik AI Inc. has closed a $200 million Series D that will take its driverless fleet from dozens of trucks on the road today to more than 100 by the end of 2026, the company said on August 25. The round was led by Qatar Investment Authority and Koch Disruptive Technologies, with participation from Millennium Management, ARK Investment Management and Intact Private Capital.
Contracted Revenue Past $600 Million
Founded in 2017 and based in Mountain View, California, Gatik runs short regional routes for grocery and consumer-goods giants, moving loads from distribution centers to retail stores. The company has completed 85,000 driverless orders to date, 99% of them on time, and now carries more than $600 million in contracted revenue across a customer roster that includes Walmart, Kroger, Tyson Foods, PepsiCo and Canada's Loblaw.
PepsiCo has become the company's largest customer since signing a multi-year agreement in June, running 41 driverless Gatik trucks on Frito-Lay routes around Dallas, Phoenix and northwest Arkansas. The trucks operate across Texas, Arizona and Arkansas in the United States and additional lanes in Canada.
Gatik Driver Runs Streets And Highways
The vehicles roll off standard manufacturer assembly lines, with Gatik supplying the autonomy through its third-generation Gatik Driver stack. The system operates on surface streets and highways around the clock and no longer stops for light rain and snow. Safety drivers were removed from commercial routes over the past year, and dynamic routing has stretched runs from fixed 10-mile loops to as much as 400 miles with multiple pickups and drop-offs.
Koch Doubles Down, Cathie Wood Weighs In
Koch Disruptive Technologies is a returning investor that led Gatik's $85 million Series B in 2021, and Intact tripled its check this round. Cathie Wood, founder and chief executive of ARK Investment Management, said autonomous freight has reached "an inflection point" as artificial intelligence and robotics converge and that Gatik has moved beyond experimentation into commercially viable operations.
Co-founder and Chief Executive Gautam Narang called the round "a clear validation of Gatik's commercial leadership in autonomous freight." The Series D takes total capital raised by Gatik to roughly $500 million and follows a run of major moves in the sector, including Waymo's Munich robotaxi rollout plans, Bedrock Robotics' autonomous excavator deployments, and PepsiCo's June rollout of Gatik trucks.
Reporting based on coverage from SiliconANGLE, Bloomberg, Forbes and Gatik.