![]() ![]() “I think from an investor-appetite perspective, I mean, the fact that this round was so heavily oversubscribed goes to show that there is significant investor interest out there still. “It’ll really be interesting to see how things unfold,” Burnette said of funding within the AV industry. Burnette said he is not considering any mergers and is not looking to be acquired. As Kodiak scales, the company will pursue more funding and will continue to evaluate options in the public markets and the private markets. That doesn’t mean Kodiak is forever done with seeking funding. ![]() ![]() Burnette has argued that Kodiak is more capitally efficient than its much larger and better-funded rivals. The company is a fraction of the size of other autonomous vehicle companies pursuing trucking, notably Aurora and Waymo. The Series B comes at a critical time for Kodiak. So we’re going to be expanding all of those efforts and that all costs money.” Scaling the fleet is also a really big one, obviously, as you watch the space you see that there’s an ever-growing interest in commercial traction and customers and partners and miles driven and the size of the autonomous freight network. “R&D is definitely the primary utilization of the funds. “We need to scale and with scale comes growth across the entire company - more drivers, more operations folks, more engineers,” Burnette said in an interview with TechCrunch. Kodiak plans to add a minimum of 15 new trucks, for a total of at least 25 autonomous vehicles. The new funding will be used to expand operations, and pay for the expansion of its fleet. Kodiak is aiming to grow from the 90 people it employs today to about 170 by the end of next year.įounder and CEO Don Burnette said the hiring is across every department in the company. Like so many startups, the funding will be used to hire more people. The company did not disclose the valuation. Kodiak has raised a total of $165 million since its founding in 2018. Bridgestone Americas and BMW i Ventures, which had announced strategic investments in Kodiak earlier this year, converted its funds to this round. Existing investors Battery Ventures, CRV and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated. Other investors include newcomers SIP Global Partners, Muirwoods Ventures, Harpoon Ventures, StepStone Group, Gopher Asset Management, Walleye Capital, Aliya Capital Partners and others. TechCrunch has been told that a freight and logistics company set up a special interest financial vehicle as the strategic lead investor spot in the round. The oversubscribed Series B stands out for its lengthy list of backers and notably that the lead investor is not listed and not being disclosed. Kodiak Robotics, one of the last privately held autonomous truck outfits in Silicon Valley, has raised $125 million in new capital, funding that will be used to double its workforce as it pursues a path to commercialization. ![]()
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