Jan 5 (Reuters) - Kodiak AI said on Monday it has partnered with Bosch to ramp up manufacturing of autonomous trucking hardware and sensors, as the self-driving truck company looks to move from pilot deployments toward large-scale commercial rollout.
Self-driving technology developers are facing mounting pressure from investors to demonstrate viable business models after years of heavy spending with limited revenue. Many industry players are turning to freight, which operates on more predictable routes and offers clearer paths to profitability.
Bosch will supply Kodiak with a range of automotive-grade components, including sensors and vehicle actuation systems such as steering technologies, the companies said at the CES trade show in Las Vegas.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Bosch will collaborate with Kodiak to develop a production-grade, redundant autonomous platform that integrates hardware, firmware and software interfaces needed to deploy Kodiak's AI-powered driver in trucks, either on factory production lines or retrofit them.
Kodiak, which went public about three months ago, has positioned itself as one of the few autonomous trucking companies to operate vehicles without a human safety driver onboard in commercial service. The company says it has already deployed customer-owned, driverless trucks, a milestone that many rivals have yet to reach.
Bosch, the world's largest automotive supplier by revenue, has been expanding its footprint in autonomous mobility by supplying sensors, compute and vehicle control systems to carmakers and technology firms.
(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and Abhirup Roy in San Francisco; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Krishna Chandra Eluri)
