Kodiak lands first commercial deal to supply driverless trucks for public highways

Kodiak AI volition present 75 self-driving trucks to freight institution DTL Transport starting successful 2028. It’s the company’s archetypal binding commercialized woody for driverless large rigs that volition tally connected nationalist highways.

The contract, announced Wednesday, comes conscionable up of Kodiak’s adjacent large milestone: pulling quality information operators retired of the cab to statesman operating a driverless road work successful December. The company, which went public successful September 2025, plans to motorboat that work by carrying goods for Ikea connected Interstate 45 betwixt Dallas and Houston.

DTL Transport, a California mid-market trucking institution that hauls caller nutrient and goods to market chains, plans to usage the self-driving trucks connected aggregate interstate road routes, starting with Dallas to El Paso, Texas, and Interstate 20 betwixt Dallas and Atlanta. Kodiak has already conducted investigating and operations connected those 2 routes.

“One of the things that we emotion astir mid-market carriers (like DTL) is that they are capable to determination with accelerated execution speed, overmuch much astatine the velocity of a startup oregon a tiny institution oregon a tech institution similar Kodiak, and that they conscionable privation to get worldly done,” Kodiak laminitis and CEO Don Burnette told TechCrunch successful an exclusive interview. “It’s easier for them to integrate into their fleet due to the fact that they’re not arsenic large, and we deliberation that this is simply a existent turning constituent for the self-driving manufacture successful general.”

The declaration should springiness Kodiak a gross boost and a affirmative benchmark. Its shares person fallen 87% from their opening-day price. It besides puts Kodiak connected a way to go an “asset-light” exertion supplier, meaning it would merchantability its exertion alternatively than ain and tally trucks itself — a goal it shares with rival Aurora Innovation.

Today, Kodiak has a fig of customers nether a Trucking-as-a-Service (TaaS) model, including Charger USA, Roehl Transport, and Werner Enterprises. Under this concern model, Kodiak owns and operates the self-driving trucks arsenic a third-party bearer connected behalf of different companies. It presently carries freight for these companies connected a fewer routes successful Texas. Kodiak generates gross carrying freight regular for these companies connected 3 progressive routes, but Burnette described these operations arsenic inactive being successful aviator stage.

Ultimately, Kodiak wants to determination to a Driver-as-a-Service (DaaS) model, successful which customers ain and run the trucks. Kodiak licenses its technology, charging customers by the mile for the duration of the contract. DTL is Kodiak’s archetypal on-highway DaaS customer, a narration that was forged during a aviator programme past period successful California. In that pilot, Kodiak autonomously hauled perishable goods for DTL astir 225 miles on Interstate 5 and California State Route 99 betwixt Fresno, California, and Los Angeles, with a quality information relation down the wheel.

“You person to beryllium retired the exertion archetypal utilizing your ain truck, amusement them that it works, amusement them that it’s safe, amusement them that it integrates,” Burnette said, describing the Trucking-as-a-Service model. “And past we privation to beryllium plus light. We don’t privation to beryllium successful the concern of moving a trucking company.”

Atlas Energy Solutions has been a Driver-as-a-Service lawsuit since 2024. Technically, Atlas was Kodiak’s archetypal lawsuit nether a binding commercialized contract, but its driverless trucks run successful off-road settings successful West Texas’ distant Permian Basin. Atlas presently owns and operates 35 driverless trucks equipped with Kodiak’s self-driving system. Burnette said Kodiak is connected way to person arsenic galore arsenic 100 successful work determination by mid-2027.

Kodiak didn’t uncover the worth of the woody with DTL Transport. However, its nationalist 2025 capitalist presentation offers immoderate clues astir the contract’s imaginable value.

In that document, Kodiak forecast yearly recurring gross of $150,000 to $190,000 per truck. That forecast rests connected respective assumptions, including a per-mile licensing interest of astir $0.97 (in enactment with existent quality operator costs per mile), yearly mileage of astir 225,000 miles a twelvemonth per truck, and different factors.

Assuming those projections carnivore out, the woody with DTL Transport could make astatine slightest astir $11.2 cardinal successful yearly recurring gross erstwhile each 75 trucks are delivered.