Gatik, the autonomous vehicle startup known for its self-driving box trucks, has raised $200 million just two months after striking a multi-year commercial agreement with PepsiCo.
The round was led by Qatar Investment Authority and Koch Disruptive Technologies, with participation from Millennium Management, ARK Invest, and Intact Private Capital. The Santa Clara, California-based company has raised about $500 million since it came out of stealth in 2019. The company didn’t disclose its valuation.
The funding, the company’s largest to date, marks a new phase for Gatik as it evolves from a startup with a few pilot programs into a company that runs commercial driverless operations with multiple commercial customers across several cities.
“These are all long-term investors,” Gatik co-founder and CEO Gautam Narang said in a recent interview. “All the scale-up plans that we have and the growth that we have in mind for the next few years — these are the kind of financial partners that can help us.”
Gatik has carved out a niche for itself in the competitive and burgeoning autonomous vehicle industry. While dozens of startups and well-funded tech companies worked on developing sidewalk delivery robots, robotaxis, self-driving big rigs for long hauls, or driverless vehicles designed for construction and mining, Gatik focused on short-haul delivery.
