Ryder Invested in Gatik, Now Gatik Will Lease and Self-Drive-ify a Fleet of Ryder Trucks
Turns out Gatik's Series B had all kinds of strategic investors.
Gatik’s $85 million Series B raise at the end of August was news enough on its own—that’s a lot of money. But it turns out that almost more intriguing than size of the investment is whom the investors are.
Gatik revealed today that commercial truck giant Ryder participated in that Series B via its corporate venture fund (the first such investment in an autonomous vehicle company for Ryder), and that Gatik will be leasing a fleet of medium-duty, multi temperature box trucks from Ryder. Naturally, Gatik will also be integrating its self-driving technology into that leased fleet of trucks to offer Autonomous Delivery as a Service to its clients.
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This news comes just weeks after Gatik revealed tire company Goodyear also participated in the Series B round. In addition to funding, Gatik will be integrating Goodyears IoT-enabled SightLine tires into its self-driving tech stack.
Not only does Gatik have an impressive roster of investors, but on the customer side, the company is also working with retail giant, Walmart. In fact, one of Gatik’s delivery routes for Walmart is being done fully autonomously and completely driverless.
In other words, Gatik has quickly assembled a portfolio of high-profile investors and partnerships that could help the startup become the de facto dominant player in autonomous middle-mile delivery — before any other autonomous players can even come to market. Udelv is another self-driving middle-mile delivery startup, it won’t start commercial operations until 2023.
All of these pieces are certainly coming together at the right time for Gatik. The world is gripped by supply chain problems and Gatik could help with one small piece of that complicated puzzle as autonomous trucks drive around the clock and don’t require fining and hiring human drivers.
Gatik’s Ryder fleet will initially be deployed in Dallas, Texas before expanding across the U.S. and Canada.