PALO ALTO, CALIF – JUNE 06, 2019 – Gatik, a Palo Alto-based start-up deploying autonomous vehicles for business to business (B2B) short-haul logistics, today launches with Walmart (NYSE: WMT) as a partner. “We are a strong believer in autonomous vehicle technology, and we look forward to learning more about how Gatik’s innovation can benefit our customers in the coming months,” said Tom Ward, Senior Vice President of Digital Operations at Walmart.
Last year, the company raised a $4.5 million seed round led by Innovation Endeavors that has led to the development of Gatik’s technology and secured launches of additional commercial services this year. Additional investors of the company’s seed round included Trucks Venture Capital; Dynamo Venture Capital; Fontinalis Partners; and AngelPad. In an increasingly on-demand economy, urban logistics have become the most expensive part of a business’ supply chain. Gatik brings delivery and logistics into the future with Level 4 autonomous light commercial trucks and vans for B2B short-haul logistics. While the majority of autonomous innovation is occurring in passenger transportation, Gatik meets a critical need in the market, serving a variety of use-cases including:
- Third-party logistics (3PL) companies
- Consumer goods distributors
- Food and beverage distributors
- Medical and pharmaceutical distributors
- Auto parts distributors
“The impact of Gatik’s technology extends far beyond the ideas around ‘driverless’ that people usually associate with autonomous vehicle technologies — it will embed efficiency and intelligence into all parts of the delivery experience,” said Dror Berman, Founding Partner at Innovation Endeavors and a Gatik board member. “Considering that the delivery job market has grown over 200% since 2015, there’s a huge demand for smart, scalable delivery solutions. Gatik will allow companies to change the way they think about urban logistics, while improving and integrating delivery experiences within the fabric of neighborhoods.”
“We are focused on deploying autonomous commercial service at scale to address the costly,
underserved middle-mile delivery for businesses, like Walmart, the largest retailer in the world,” said Gautam Narang, CEO and co-founder of Gatik. “Our investors represent the best in technology,
autonomy, logistics and supply chain, and our last funding round has allowed us to quickly grow and be prepared to deploy with additional customers in the coming months.”
Gatik ensures goods are transported efficiently and affordably in city environments between business locations. The Gatik solution cuts operation costs up to 50 percent for businesses while improving safety, increasing efficiency, and reducing road congestion and emissions.
“There is a huge gap between autonomous Class 8 big rig trucks, which can only operate on highways, and smaller automated vehicles such as sidewalk robots and Nuro vehicles, which are restricted by operation speed, capacity, distance, and the curb. Gatik fills the critical ‘middle mile’ part of logistics, which is only becoming more valuable as a layer in the $800B logistics ecosystem,” said Reilly Brennan, Founding General Partner at Trucks Venture Capital. “We’re inspired by Gatik’s vision and expertise to solve the untapped market of urban short-haul delivery logistics.”
Both brothers and co-founders, Gautam Narang and Arjun Narang (CTO) have been working together in the field of robotics, AI and machine learning for 10+ years, also previously working with Apeksha Kumavat, Gatik’s third co-founder, to develop autonomous outdoor security robots. Together, the trio of co-founders bring expertise from Carnegie Mellon, Ford, and Honda’s self driving research units; and bring more than a decade of experience, deep knowledge of autonomous systems, and award-winning innovations including the DARPA Challenges and the Google X Prize for moon rover technology.
“Our team is made up of the very best minds from academia and industry,” said Apeksha Kumavat, Chief Engineer and co-founder of Gatik. “Collectively, we have made critical contributions and technological breakthroughs in robotics and machine learning that has enabled us to build and launch an autonomous service that is filling a gap in the market where the vehicles are on the road (not on the sidewalk), operating on city roads, and traveling longer distances (typically up to 100 miles), and with a much higher payload.”
About Gatik
Gatik is in the business of autonomous freight. The company operates driverless trucks daily for Fortune 50 retailers, grocers and CPG companies, moving freight between distribution centers and stores across Texas, Arizona, Arkansas, and Canada. Gatik has a strong safety record across its operations and is powered by the Gatik Driver™, a scalable, interpretable AI system purpose-built to enable safe, consistent, and high-frequency freight movement. For more information, visit gatik.ai.
Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains “forward-looking statements” that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or Gatik’s future financial or operating performance. Forward-looking statements include information concerning possible or assumed future results of operations, including descriptions of our business plan and strategies, revenue targets and trends we expect to affect our business. These statements often include words such as “contracted,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “may,” “can,” “should,” “could,” “might,” “plan,” “possible,” “project,” “strive,” “budget,” “forecast,” “expect,” “intend,” “target”, “will,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” “continue,” “scheduled”. Forward-looking statements may also be made, verbally or in writing, by members of our Board or management team in connection with this news release.
These forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and beliefs. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause Gatik’s actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including Gatik’s ability to execute on its growth plans, any failure to comply with laws, rules, regulations or business practices that Gatik may become subject to as a result of any expansion of its business resulting from the financing, including Gatik’s ability to successfully execute on its growth strategies and operating plans, achieve its targeted annualized contracted revenue, continue to develop its existing customer base, design and deploy an expanded fleet of trucks on behalf of customers, and diversify and expand into the market for autonomous logistics solutions. These and other important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements made in this press release. Any forward-looking statement included in this press release speaks only as of the date of such statement. Except as required by law, Gatik disclaims any obligation to update or revise, or to publicly announce any update or revision to, any of the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
The securities described herein have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and were offered and sold in a transaction exempt from registration under the Securities Act. The securities may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration under the Securities Act or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act.
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Media Contact:
Aarthi Sivaraman
aarthi.sivaraman@gatik.ai
