GoKawiilis transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.
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This year is shaping up to be a big one for self-driving trucks. In addition to Aurora’s plan to deploy hundreds of autonomous big rigs and Waabi expanding into robotaxis, you’ve also got Kodiak AI aiming to launch its own fully driverless long-haul freight operation by the end of 2026. While robotaxis may still win all the headlines, driverless trucks are making their own progress, slowly but surely.
But in a recent interview, Kodiak AI CEO Don Burnette said that deploying autonomous trucks is really only half the battle. He said that while most of his competitors are fussing over details like AI, perception, and mileage milestones, Kodiak is planning for the reality of operating a business. That includes answering important questions like who owns the trucks, how much uptime will be required, and what ultimately gets shipped.
“So you start to very quickly realize that it’s not just does the truck operate safely on the road … that’s table stakes,” Burnette said. “What really matters to customers is how efficiently and effectively can I get that truck into and out of my operation … and everything in between. And nobody talks about this either.”
Kodiak AI (formerly Kodiak Robotics) was founded in 2018 by Burnette, a veteran of Google’s self-driving car project (now called Waymo), and Paz Eshel. The company is developing self-driving trucks for highway and industrial uses, as well as the defense industry. In 2025, the company’s trucks began making driverless deliveries for Atlas Energy Solutions in the oil-rich Permian Basin of West Texas and eastern New Mexico, and now operates 20 driverless trucks there. Kodiak AI went public through a reverse SPAC merger in September 2025.
And now the company is finally ready for the open road. Burnette said that Kodiak operates across multiple verticals, with a emphasis on industrial and off-road trucking, which he views as a major opportunity compared to traditional on-road autonomy. He describes these environments as “unstructured,” because they’re more complex and unpredictable. In this way, he says his trucks have become better prepared for more “structured” environments, like highways.
“We plan to pull the driver by the end of the year,” Burnette said. “Remember the product isn’t valuable unless it’s driverless.”
But first, Kodiak needs to complete its safety case. This includes extensive data collection, driving virtually in a simulated world, and creating a detailed plan for risk mitigation. Burnette said his team’s background at Waymo helped influence its rigorous approach to safety.
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