Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Warren Buffett bought a self-driving truck company.

Pilot, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway, bought a self-driving truck start-up called Kodiak Robotics this week, Bloomberg reported.

Berkshire Hathaway, founded by Buffett in 1965, is an insurance company with business activities in many other areas, while Pilot is the largest truck rest station operator in the United States.

▲ Bloomberg reports screenshots

The acquired Kodiak Robotics, founded in 2018 to provide self-driving solutions for long-distance freight trucks, has been operating commercially in Texas since 2019, and its founder is a former Waymo and Uber mogul.

The exact amount of the acquisition has not been disclosed, but Bloomberg reports that Pilot already has one of Kodiak's five board seats and is currently the company's largest strategic investor.

According to Bloomberg, the acquisition is not a random "bet" of Warren Buffett on a start-up, but after seeing that driverless trucks have gradually landed commercially, and have already produced related revenue and mass production products.

Just like Warren Buffett didn't buy Apple stock until 2016.

Indeed, self-driving trucks do land faster than Robotaxi, thanks to a more closed scene and a more mature business model. So now self-driving trucks have once again become a hot item on this track, and more and more bosses are switching to self-driving trucks.

Kodiak Robotics was founded in April 2018 by Don Burnette and Paz Eshel as not only a self-driving truck start-up, but also a freight carrier.

Among them, Don Burnette, who worked in Google's self-driving department for nearly six years as a software engineer, is an out-and-out technology bull.

▲ Don Burnette resume

In 2016, Don Burnette and Anthony Levandowski, a colleague in Google's self-driving division, left Google and co-founded Otto (self-driving company, a non-e-commerce group Otto). Uber acquired it for about $680 million (4.66 billion yuan), and Don Burnette came to Uber as head of software technology.

Interestingly, after Uber acquired Otto, Waymo accused Uber and Otto of conspiring to steal confidential information through Anthony Levandowski, a former employee, who then left the company for a startup called Kache.ai, which is working on "smart transportation" in trucks.

After only a year and a half with Uber, Don Burnette left to co-founded Kodiak Robotics with venture capitalist Paz Eshel, who served as CEO,Paz Eshel and COO.

▲ Kodiak Robotics

According to public information, Kodiak Robotics has received at least two rounds of financing, with a financing amount of more than $150 million (about 1.02 billion yuan), including Bridgestone and BMW corporate funds.

At the technical level, Kodiak Robotics developed its own Kodiak Driver system, which is an autopilot system designed for long-distance truck transportation.

Last September, Kodiak Robotics launched its fourth-generation self-driving truck, with hardware including Luminar's Iris lidar, ZF's full-range radar, Wesai Technology's mechanical lidar and Nvidia's DRIVE platform.

▲ Kodiak Robotics fourth-generation self-driving truck

Since mid-2019, Kodiak Robotics has opened freight services between Dallas, Oklahoma City, Atlanta, Houston and other American cities, with partners including 10 Roads Express, CEVA Logistics and so on.

Second, domestic self-driving trucks ushered in a wave of entrepreneurship. In addition to the United States, a number of new companies have set off a wave of self-driving truck entrepreneurship in China recently.

Especially with pony Zhixing system as the main. According to incomplete statistics, there are at least three self-driving truck companies founded or participated by former employees of Horse Zhixing, namely, Qianhang Technology, Optimus Smart Card, and go Technology.

In July 2021, Tao Ji, a veteran of Baidu's self-driving team, Sun Haowen, a member of Horse Zhihang's start-up team, and Ding Fei, head of technology travel at IDG Capital, jointly founded a start-up company specializing in L4 (trunk logistics) self-driving trucks.

The office area of ▲ thousand-link technology

In August 2021, Zhao Ruixuan, a former vice president of Horse Zhixing, and Wang Qingzhou, a Waymo technology boss, founded go Technology, which focuses on logistics of L4 self-driving electric trucks.

At the end of 2021, Pan Zhenhao, CTO of Pony Zhika, and Sun Youhan, head of planning and control of Pony Zhika's American team, left the company and founded the self-driving truck company Optimus Smart Card, which serves as CEO and CTO respectively.

In addition to ponies, many industry leaders left to start self-driving truck companies in the first half of this year.

Tong Xianqiao, former CEO of self-driving star startup Roadstar, founded CORAGE, which focuses on self-driving and intelligent logistics technology for commercial vehicles.

The core staff of Zhijia Technology has also established Windrose of Weidu Technology, which focuses on new energy heavy trucks, on-line chassis, powertrain and so on.

Conclusion: self-driving trucks are becoming more and more popular as more and more players flock to the self-driving track, so does the whole industry.

Compared with the high degree of uncertainty of Robotaxi commercialization, the commercial landing of self-driving trucks has more advantages, which is one of the reasons why self-driving trucks have become popular in recent years and are deeply loved by the capital market.

With the acquisition of Kodiak Robotics by Berkshire Hathaway, this view is once again confirmed.

The addition of new players will undoubtedly make the pool of the entire industry more competitive and dynamic, but it is unknown who can withstand the surging changes on the road to entrepreneurship.

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