Outrider Secures $62 Million for Autonomous Truck Services

By Nick Carey

(Reuters) – U.S. self-driving truck firm Outrider announced on Thursday that it has raised $62 million from investors to expand its autonomous truck services within distribution yards, catering to e-commerce, manufacturing, and other industries.

The Series D funding round was led by Koch Disruptive Technologies, the venture capital arm of Koch Industries, alongside New Enterprise Associates (NEA). It also saw fresh investments from Nvidia's venture capital arm NVentures and Prologis' venture capital efforts.

With this recent funding, the Brighton, Colorado-based Outrider has now raised over $250 million.

Outrider's system employs self-driving electric yard trucks capable of coupling and uncoupling tractors and trailers using a robotic arm, while also maneuvering between dock doors and parking spots.

The development of fully autonomous vehicles that can navigate everywhere has proven to be more challenging and costly than initially anticipated. Although funding for robotaxi startups has dwindled, investment continues for companies focusing on simpler self-driving vehicle solutions, particularly in truck yards and airports, which are less complex environments and have fewer human-operated vehicles.