but we don't want to turn now to another startup
. The shaking things up in its own right self
driving truck company, kodiak robotics raising$125 million in
its own latest round coming as the trucking industry is
facing some real challenges including growing shipping demand and driver
shortages, Kodiak says its autonomous technology can help businesses
move goods faster, safer, cleaner and more efficiently
. Joining me now to talk about all of this
is the Ceo and founder of kodiak robotics. Uh
Don Burnett Don, thank you so much for coming
on. The show provides some more details here about
the technology that your company uses to power its self
driving vehicles. Thanks for having me, we've all
felt the impacts of the supply chain crisis just as
you mentioned, and there is a massive shortage of
drivers here in the United States and self driving technology
, particularly on the long haul routes, has the
opportunity to really alleviate and reduce congestion on our roadways
, reducing times for delivery and and ultimately bringing down
costs for consumers. And at kodiak we're building some
of the world's best self driving technology. We've been
doing it for the last four years and we have
many industry veterans and now with this new funding,
we have the opportunity to really expand our reach,
um uh, continue to grow the team, uh
continue to increase our testing and research development aspects and
uh really deliver on the vision that I think is
going to have dramatic impacts throughout society. Is this
fully self driving technology. Are these vehicles truly operating
completely on their own? So today we're operating with
a safety driver behind the wheel. Uh we've been
we've been moving commercial freight with some great partners for
over 2.5 years now. We started based out of
texas, we've been driving routes like Dallas to Houston
, Dallas and san Antonio and others um always with
a safety driver behind the wheel. But the technology
is now to the point where it can actually handle
everything that the road throws at it without the safety
driver having to take over or touch the system at
all. We've posted thousands of miles of raw uncut
footage of our self driving system out there carrying commercial
freight um driving hundreds of miles at a time without
any intervention from our safety drivers. So the systems
are very, very capable today. Mhm. Okay
.$125 million in new funding. Don how are
you gonna put that to work? As I said
before, we're going to be expanding the team,
We're based out here in in mountain view, California
where our headquarters are. We also have a testing
and operations facility based in Dallas texas where a fairly
small team, We really pride ourselves and our capital
efficiency to date. But this is a huge infusion
of capital for us to continue to expand our company
to hire new employees to hire engineers to hire operations
folks and really expand our footprint. We're going to
be looking at markets outside of texas outside of Dallas
and expanding our commercial operations as we grow our partner
base as well. So let's talk more about that
partner base that you're looking to grow, who are
some of your current partner's big name partners And how
are you gonna expand from there? Well, unfortunately
, uh, we have some big, big announcements
coming, but all of our partners currently are,
are confidential, but we are working with some,
some major household names that everybody would, uh,
would recognize. And we have a couple of announcements
coming in the near future. As for our expansion
, we have been focused on the state of the
state of texas, which has been a really great
partner for us. But ultimately, the promise of
self, the self driving technology is much more broad
than any given one state. You can imagine that
self driving trucks can move goods twice as far in
the same amount of time than a human driver can
because these trucks can operate more or less 24 7
. So we're looking to expand coast to coast.
We want to move freight on routes like Atlanta to
Dallas, Atlanta to L. A. Um,
and, and, and across the country. So
what about those routes specifically are lucrative for you?
Those ones that you mentioned that you're looking to expand
to, for a potential investor. What makes those
ones are the right ones that you want to pursue
. Well, the routes that are beneficial as a
first application for this technology are the ones beyond which
human can drive in in one day. So truck
drivers are restricted by what's called hours of service.
So that typically means they can only drive for about
11 hours per day and then they have to pull
over and rest for the remainder of the day,
so you can only go so far one day.
Whereas self driving trucks having the potential to move twice
as far in that in that, in that same
amount of time. And so we're looking for routes
that really take advantage of the benefits of moving long
distance, moving freight over long distances, but at
prices that are much lower than, say, moving
them by air. But I assume don, when
you do expand to those initially, those expanded routes
, there will still be a safety driver behind the
wheel, even though the goal right, is to
eventually make these long haul trips without the driver.
How long is the driver going to be behind the
wheel? We actually anticipate that we'll be able to
remove the driver over the next couple of years.
This technology is extremely mature. We've come a long
way, both at kodiak and as an industry and
there's a tremendous amount of momentum. Now there's many
companies working on this problem and I think in the
next couple of years you're actually going to see real
commercial applications with self driving vehicles that are, that
no longer have any driver behind behind the wheel.
And we're excited to deliver that technology. All right
, Don Burnett. You'll have to keep us posted
. I hope you come back on the show,
Dons, the founder and Ceo of Kodiak robotics,
a self driving truck startup.