A lot of the recent buzz around autonomous trucking technology has focused on long-haul and heavy-duty tractors moving freight between distribution points hundreds of miles away. Autonomous startup Gatik, however, is focusing on medium-duty box trucks and the middle mile—on and off highways.

Like other AV companies, Gatik is setting up a presence in regulatory-friendly Texas with a new autonomous trucking facility in Fort Worth. The Palo Alto, California-based transportation technology company announced a new autonomous hub in Texas along with news that it raised $85 million in Series B funding, led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT). That money will help Gatik scale its fleet of Classes 3-6 self-driving box trucks.

“Surprisingly, the industry has overlooked this middle-mile segment,” Gautam Narang, Gatik’s CEO and co-founder, told FleetOwner. “For us, that has been great because we get all the validation that we need from our customers. From Day One, Gatik has been focused on making sure that we’re solving a real pain point and not building technology just for the sake of building technology.”

Gatik’s fleet of 20 AV vehicles is currently driving for Walmart and other companies that focus on groceries. Narang hopes to have a much larger fleet by 2023. “As long as we can whitelist one route for unmanned operation and deploy at least three trucks along that route, that site becomes profitable for us,” he said. “That’s basically our strategy towards scaling disruption.”

In Arkansas, Gatik-controlled trucks deliver products—without a safety driver on board—between a dark store and a Walmart Neighborhood Market in Bentonville. The AV company also partnered with Walmart to launch battery-electric AV box trucks in Louisiana. In Canada, Gatik self-driving vehicles are hauling cargo for Loblaws Inc., that nation’s largest grocer. These partnerships came with the company’s Series A funding, which was announced in November 2020.

The latest round of funding and move into Texas puts Gatik in its fourth North American market and sets the company, founded in 2017, up for “growth mode,” Narang said.

Narang said Gatik is also making deliveries for “multiple other Fortune 500 customers” but declined to name those companies. “These are the customers that provide multitenancy for the Texas market,” he said. “Meaning our trucks are operating more than 20 hours daily. We move goods for Customer A during the day and another customer at night. The idea is to maximize the weekly utilization, allowing us to increase the margins even further.”

Along with KDT, already existing investors Innovation Endeavors, Wittington Ventures, FM Capital, Dynamo Ventures, Trucks VC, and Intact Ventures participated in the latest round of funding.

Chase Koch, president of KDT, noted the “explosive growth of ecommerce” that is disrupting the logistics industry as companies and customers seek more efficient goods movement. “Nowhere is this more pronounced than on the middle mile,” Koch said. “Gatik’s transformational autonomous technology and world-class team are defining the standard in B2B short-haul logistics by addressing the most prominent issues facing today’s supply chain. We believe Gatik will be the first to commercialize autonomous technology at scale for the North American medium-duty trucking market.”

Middle-mile

Gatik plans to unveil more details of how it intends to scale up its offerings in the coming months as Gatik focuses on that “B2B short-haul,” middle-mile segment. “Our use-case is such where we drive on routes that are anywhere from single-digit miles all the way up to 300 miles—focusing on urban, semi-urban, and highway driving,” he said. “Typically, we focus on moving goods from a micro-distribution center to a micro-fulfillment center to multiple retail locations that are close to the customer.”

Gatik’s self-driving technology is on Class 3-6 box trucks that range from 11’ to 26’. While it has used some Ford Transit chassis cabs, Gatik and Isuzu North America recently struck a deal to collaborate on mass-producing Level 4 autonomous medium-duty trucks earlier this year. Narang noted that Gatik’s technology is “OEM agnostic” and could work on various equipment.

Unlike long-haul, heavy-duty AV companies focused on self-driving trucks moving freight along divided highways, where safety drivers control the tractor once it exits the highway, Gatik’s Level 4 AV technology can transition from highway to surface roads, Narang said. “We have designed our technology stack to handle all the complex urban scenarios,” Narang said. “Everything from traffic light navigation to intersection navigation to working around pedestrians, bicyclists. All of that is fair game for us.”

To help its technology succeed, Narang said that Gatik pre-plans the routes for its box trucks “where we feel we can deploy this technology safely.”

Texas

Narang noted that the high-density Texas Triangle—the Dallas-Fort Worth in the north, San Antonio in the southwest, and Houston in the southeast—is ripe for better goods movement. To support its expansion in the state, Gatik has partnered with the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone. Gatik’s move into the Lone Star State could create 500 new jobs by 2025, according to the company. Those jobs include operational, technical, and business roles.

Narang said four things drew his company to Texas:

• Gatik already has customers within this “internationally recognized logistics hub.”
• Texas has a “very progressive and favorable regulatory environment.”
• The state’s climate offers “favorable weather conditions.” While Gatik’s AV technology can handle a light rain, it is still working on navigating through heavy rain and winter weather.
• “The most exciting one is we see Texas as a very scalable market, where we can establish a long-term presence in the state, and this is a market with opportunities of multitenancy” are met.

Hillwood’s AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone offers mobility companies access to an ecosystem, resources, and partnerships to test, scale, and commercialize the latest technologies. AllianceTexas itself is a 27,000-acre facility in North Texas, anchored by the world’s first dedicated industrial airport, Fort Worth Alliance Airport, and hosts one of the nation’s biggest intermodal hubs. AllianceTexas is home to more than 525 companies that have built more than 50 million sq ft and created over 62,000 jobs.

“Gatik is the perfect partner for Hillwood in our efforts to accelerate emerging mobility technologies within the MIZ,” said Ross Perot, Jr., chairman of Hillwood. “As Gatik leads the way in autonomous middle-mile delivery, their commitment to the MIZ will continue to position AllianceTexas as a global focal point in the commercialization of budding logistics solutions.”