Soros and ARK Bet $2.5 Billion on Driverless Trucks – Inside Kodiak Robotics’ Bold Wall Street Debut
Kodiak Robotics was founded in 2018 with a vision of commercializing driverless semi-trucks at scale. CEO Don Burnette, an industry veteran, previously worked on Google’s self-driving car team and co-founded Otto techcrunch.com. After the Otto saga, Burnette zeroed in on trucking as the “killer app” for autonomy – a sector where automating long-haul rigs could dramatically cut costs and fill chronic driver shortages techcrunch.com reuters.com. Kodiak set up operations in Mountain View, CA, but did much of its testing in Texas, taking advantage of open highways and favorable regulations.