Just four months old and already 40 million dollar raised. That’s the Palo Alto-based startup Kodiak Robotics, founded in April 2018 by former Waymo and Uber-engineer Don Burnett and former venture capitalist Paz Eshel. The goal is to develop self-driving semi-trucks. They are joining a list of other companies such as Waymo, Embark, or Peloton.
Among the employees are also former Waymo-pioneers, such as the Austrian-born computer vision specialist Andreas Wendel.
Uber stepped into a legal quagmire with Otto-founder and former Google-engineer, and hit another roadblock with a fatal crash in Chandler that one of their cars had caused. That led the company to reorganize its development efforts and shut down the self-driving truck division.
The Kodiak-founders have not yet announced when the first test vehicles will be hitting the roads or who the partners are. But the vicinity of the startup’s headquarter to the Moffett Airfield may be an indication where they are going to test their self-driving semis. The Moffett Airfield is one of several test areas for self-driving cars around the bay Area.
This article has also been published in German.
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