Self-driving trucks startup Einride raises $100M

Einride, the Swedish startup known for its unusual-looking electrical and autonomous pods that are designed to transportation freight, said Wednesday it has raised $100 cardinal from respective caller and existing investors, including its largest shareholder, EQT Ventures.

The rise included an undisclosed strategical concern from quantum computing institution IonQ. Neither Einride, nor its investors, disclosed the company’s post-money valuation.

The backing comes arsenic Einride adjusts to a caller CEO and tries to standard its 3 concern products: electrical large rigs, autonomous pod-like trucks that navigate fixed routes, and readying bundle designed for shippers. Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli said the backing would let the institution to turn with its lawsuit basal and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous freight technology.

The company, which was founded successful 2016, started successful Sweden with a ngo to disrupt the freight manufacture — archetypal with electrical trucks, past with electrical autonomous pods, which are purpose-built without a steering instrumentality oregon pedals for self-driving.

Einride has expanded beyond Sweden and operates a fleet of heavy-duty electrical trucks successful Europe, North America, and the UAE, for companies similar PepsiCo, Carlsberg Sweden, and DP World. The institution has made immoderate inroads with its autonomous pod-like trucks with customers Apotea successful Sweden and GE Appliances successful the United States.

“We judge Einride is gathering the astir implicit and forward-looking freight ecosystem connected the marketplace today,” Ted Persson, spouse astatine EQT Ventures, said successful a statement. “Nordic tech has a wont of being underestimated, until it softly rewires an full industry. That’s precisely what Einride is doing successful freight.”

Still, Einride has undergone interior changes and has grappled — on with the remainder of the nascent autonomous conveyance exertion assemblage — with the agelong and costly process of moving from improvement to commercialized operations.

Five months ago, Einride co-founder Robert Falck near the CEO relation and took implicit arsenic enforcement president of the committee to absorption connected the company’s semipermanent strategy. Charli, who had been CFO, was promoted to the apical enactment position.

The institution antecedently raised $500 million successful 2022 successful a Series C circular of equity and debt. The equity-based $200 cardinal information came from backers including Northzone, EQT Ventures, Temasek, Swedish pension money AMF, Polar Structure, and Norrsken VC. It besides secured $300 cardinal successful indebtedness backing led by Barclays Europe.