![](https://www.auvsi.org/sites/default/files/styles/banner-1440x440breakpoints_theme_auvsi_mobile_1x/public/default_images/NewsEntry-Default-Header.jpg?itok=AJ_YMyGK×tamp=1483725636)
![](https://www.auvsi.org/sites/default/files/styles/banner-1440x440breakpoints_theme_auvsi_mobile_1x/public/default_images/NewsEntry-Default-Header.jpg?itok=AJ_YMyGK×tamp=1483725636)
A self-driving truck startup called Kodiak Robotics has raised $40 million in Series A financing.
The company will use the funds to expand its team—it currently has about 10 employees—as well as for product development.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Don Burnette, co-founder and CEO of Kodiak Robotics, and Paz Eshel, the company’s other co-founder and COO, shared the basic vision for their company: “use self-driving technology to ease the current strain on the freight market.”
According to the American Trucking Association, trucks moved more than 70 percent of all U.S. freight and generated $719 billion in revenue last year, but “full-truckload, over-the-road nonlocal drivers”—a term used to describe drivers who haul goods over long distances—are in short supply.
This long-haul sector employs approximately half a million truck drivers, but was short 51,000 truck drivers last year, which was up from a shortage of 36,000 in 2016.
With this in mind, Burnette and Eshel believe that driverless trucks can help close that gap.
“We believe self-driving trucks will likely be the first autonomous vehicles to support a viable business model, and we are proud to have the support of such high-profile investors to help us execute on our plan,” Burnette says.
Kodiak Robotics plans to use a variety of technologies for its trucks, including light detection, LiDAR, and camera, radar and sonar technologies.
“Pretty much everything you can imagine self-driving cars using in a comprehensive sensor fusion type system,” Burnette says.
Engineers will focus on developing the full self-driving system stack from the company’s own hardware and software architectures, but Kodiak Robotics will not build any sensors; instead, the company will use sensors from third-party suppliers.