INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
In Don Burnette and Paz Eshel view, trucking is the killer app for self-driving technology.It what led Burnette to leave the Google
self-driving project and co-foundOtto in early 2016, along with Anthony Levandowski, Lior Ron and Claire Delaunay.And it what would
eventually prompt Burnette to leave Uber — the company that acquired Otto— and co-found with former venture capitalist Eshel a new
driverless-trucks startup called Kodiak Robotics.&It was no secret that Uber was primarily focused on the car project and 80 to 90 percent
of my time was focused on the car project,& Burnette told TechCrunch
&But I still felt that trucking was the killer app for self-driving
I wanted to focus 100 percent of my time on trucking.&Now he and Eshel can
Kodiak Robotics, which was founded in April, is coming out of stealth loaded up with venture capital.Kodiak Robotics announcedTuesdayit has
raised $40 million in Series A financing led by Battery Ventures
CRV, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Tusk Ventures also participated in the round
Itzik Parnafes, a general partner at Battery Ventures, will join Kodiak board.KodiakRobotics will use the funds to expand its team and for
The company has about 10 employees, according to Eshel, who was a vice president at Battery Ventures, where he led the firm
autonomous-vehicle investment project.Burnette noted the core engineering team — many of whom have experience in shipping self-driving
vehicles on public roads — has been assembled.The pair weren&t ready to discuss the company go-to-market strategy
They did share the basic vision though: use self-driving technology to ease the current strain on the freight market.The trucking industry
is a primary driver of the U.S
economy.Trucks moved more than 70 percent of all U.S
freight and generated $719 billion in revenue in 2017, according to the American Trucking Association
Meanwhile, &full-truckload, over-the-road nonlocal drivers,& a term used to describe drivers who haul goods over long distances, are in
This long-haul sector, which employs about 500,000, was short 51,000 truck drivers last year — up from a shortage of 36,000 in
2016.Burnette and Eshel see an opportunity for driverless trucks to 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 said.They also revealed the company technical approach.Kodiak Robotics plans to use light detection and
ranging radar known as LiDAR as well as camera, radar and sonar technologies
&Pretty much everything you can imagine self-driving cars using in a comprehensive sensor fusion type system,& Burnette said.Engineers will
focus on developing the full self-driving system stack from the company own hardware and software architectures
However, Kodiak Robotics is not going to build any sensors
Instead it will use sensors from third-party suppliers.
