A week after Uber shut down its autonomous truck program a former member of both that effort and Google’s Self-Driving Car project is resurfacing with a robot semi-truck startup that’s hitting the road with $40 million in Series A funding.
Don Burnette, who left Uber in March, and ex-venture capitalist Paz Eshel co-founded Kodiak Robotics in April to compete for business in an increasingly attractive target for autonomous vehicle tech: long-haul trucking. The Mountain View, California-based startup will use the funds to staff up on engineers and field a test fleet of AI-enabled big rigs loaded with laser Lidar sensors, radar, cameras, and computers.
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