Self-driving truck startup Gatik raises $200M following PepsiCo deal

Gatik, the autonomous conveyance startup known for its self-driving container trucks, has raised $200 cardinal conscionable 2 months aft striking a multi-year commercialized statement with PepsiCo.

The circular was led by Qatar Investment Authority and Koch Disruptive Technologies, with information from Millennium Management, ARK Invest, and Intact Private Capital. The Santa Clara, California-based institution has raised astir $500 cardinal since it came retired of stealth successful 2019. The institution didn’t disclose its valuation.

The funding, the company’s largest to date, marks a caller signifier for Gatik arsenic it evolves from a startup with a fewer aviator programs into a institution that runs commercialized driverless operations with aggregate commercialized customers crossed respective cities.

“These are each semipermanent investors,” Gatik co-founder and CEO Gautam Narang said successful a caller interview. “All the scale-up plans that we person and the maturation that we person successful caput for the adjacent fewer years — these are the benignant of fiscal partners that tin assistance us.”

Gatik has carved retired a niche for itself successful the competitory and burgeoning autonomous conveyance industry. While dozens of startups and well-funded tech companies worked connected processing sidewalk transportation robots, robotaxis, self-driving large rigs for agelong hauls, oregon driverless vehicles designed for operation and mining, Gatik focused connected short-haul delivery.

The startup built a fleet of driverless container trucks that could beryllium utilized to present nutrient and beverages for suppliers — starting with fixed-route trips that were little than 10 miles, and increasing to dynamic routes with dozens of pick-up and drop-off locations that screen up to 400 miles.

Gatik mostly sits unsocial successful this portion of the market, wherever it has go a ascendant subordinate successful alleged “middle-mile” delivery. The institution has respective high-profile customers, including Canada’s Loblaw, Walmart and PepsiCo.

Last year, the institution reached a captious method and operational milestone that allowed it to propulsion the information operator from down the instrumentality connected its commercialized routes. Gatik present has dozens of self-driving trucks that are afloat driverless and run commercially crossed respective markets. Importantly, they tin run successful a assortment of conditions and environments.

“The exertion has evolved and matured a batch implicit the past fewer years, particularly with the latest procreation of our tech,” Narang said, noting that the company’s third-generation self-driving trucks run astir the timepiece connected aboveground streets and highways, and tin grip airy rainfall and snow.

Gatik wouldn’t stock precise fleet numbers oregon corroborate the names of each of its existent customers (it has completed deliveries for Kroger and Tyson Foods arsenic well). But its largest nationalist concern is with PepsiCo, successful which 41 driverless container trucks shuttle Cheetos, Doritos, and different Frito-Lay products from organisation centers to stores successful Dallas, Phoenix and Northwest Arkansas.

That middle-mile niche has paid disconnected for the Santa Clara, California-based startup. The institution has locked successful commercialized deals worthy $600 cardinal successful contracted revenue, according to Narang.

The caller $200 cardinal volition let Gatik to standard adjacent faster — a extremity that volition necessitate it to grow beyond its 350-person workforce. Narang said the institution plans to prosecute engineers and operational unit arsenic good arsenic grow to caller markets, oregon wrong existing ones.