Microsoft to take a position greater than $10M in Gatik

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Gatik goals to automate the center mile of deliveries with its autonomous expertise. | Supply: Gatik

Microsoft Corp is in talks to put money into Gatik, in keeping with reporting from Reuters. Microsoft plans to take a position $10 million into the autonomous trucking startup as a part of a funding spherical that may worth Gatik at greater than $700 million. 

Whereas Microsoft is in superior talks with Gatik, the phrases of the deal haven’t been finalized and will nonetheless change. 

As a part of the deal, Gatik will use Microsoft’s Azure, a cloud and edge computing platform, to develop its autonomous supply expertise. Microsoft has beforehand invested in Cruise, one other autonomous driving startup, though Cruise is growing autonomous robotaxis. Cruise additionally makes use of the Azure platform for its autonomous robotaxis. 

Gatik’s autonomous trucking platform is utilized in gentle to medium-duty vans to automate the center mile in deliveries, that means Gatik takes gadgets from micro-fulfillment facilities and darkish shops and drops them off at pick-up factors, like retail shops and distribution facilities. The corporate’s vans function seven days per week, 12 hours a day on routes with mounted pick-up and drop-off areas. 

In June 2022, Gatik introduced that it signed a multi-year partnership with Georgia-Pacific, a distributor of tissue, pulp and paper-based packaging, and KBX, the transportation arm for Koch Industries. As a part of the partnership, Gatik will automate a few of the Georgia-Pacific-KBX on-road transportation networks within the Dallas-Fort Value metroplex, delivering items throughout a community of 34 Sam’s Membership areas.

The corporate hit a brand new milestone with its partnership with Walmart in November 2021. The corporate mentioned it now not has a human security driver behind the wheel of two Stage 4 autonomous field vans working in Bentonville, Arkansas, which is the house of the retail large.

Since its founding in 2017, Gatik has raised $114.5 million in funding. Its final funding spherical, a Collection B spherical, closed in August 2021 and totaled $85 million. The Collection B spherical was led by new investor Koch Disruptive Applied sciences (KDT). Present buyers Innovation Endeavours, Wittington Ventures, FM Capital, Dynamo Ventures, Vehicles VC, Intact Ventures and others additionally participated.