What’s Gatik? Based out of Toronto and Palo Alto, Gatik develops self-driving trucks designed to travel fixed routes to transport goods to and from distribution centres and retail locations.
Gatik operates trucks for Loblaws in Toronto and for Walmart in Arkansas and Louisiana.
- Some of their trucks in Arkansas are advanced enough that they don’t need a driver behind the wheel.Â
What’s next: Gatik plans to use the Series B funding to grow their team and scale up production. Gatik is following in the lead of Alphabet’s Waymo by expanding into Texas.
Why Texas? Self-driving companies like Waymo and Aurora expanded to Texas because 1)Â the Lone Star state
passed legislation to allow vehicles to operate without a driver behind the wheel, 2) it’s a
prime shipping hub, and 3) its weather conditions are ideal for testing self-driving vehicles.Â