2025: From Development to Deployment
There’s a difference between building autonomy and ramping up the real-world operations of driverless trucks.
In 2025, Kodiak made the transition.
Everything we’ve built since our founding nearly eight years ago brought us to this moment. As of September 30, 2025, Kodiak had 10 driverless trucks in operation, more than 5,200 hours of paid driverless service, and over 3 million autonomous miles under our belt. In other words, after seven years, we’re no longer only building driverless trucks, we’re deploying them.
That’s not a technology demonstration; that’s a business driving the age of Physical AI.
Those milestones were the result of a year defined by execution. We increased driverless operations, deepened commercial and public-sector partnerships, developed and deployed new AI models and capabilities, advanced our safety framework, and became a public company.
We could not be prouder of these achievements. As we build toward long-haul driverless deployment in 2026, we wanted to highlight the moments, milestones, and decisions from 2025 that showcased Kodiak as a clear industry leader.
Scaling driverless operations
As 2025 began, we had already delivered our first two driverless trucks to Atlas Energy Solutions, which owns and operates them in the Permian Basin. We grew our deployment substantially throughout the year.
By the end of the third quarter we had deployed 10 driverless trucks with Atlas. There are no humans in the cab of these trucks. This represents what we believe is the largest fleet of driverless Class 8 trucks in operation today, and more are on the way.
As these trucks deliver frac sand, we are gaining invaluable operational data that continuously improves our product while helping to accelerate our long-haul development efforts. These learnings are invaluable as we work to launch long-haul driverless service in the second half of 2026.
Class 8 Trucks, equipped with the Kodiak Driver, deliver driverless operations with precision and safety. As the first customer-owned autonomous fleet in commercial service, these vehicles are proving that autonomous technology is generating real-world value today. With seamless integration into automated workflows, Kodiak is leading the evolution of logistics and autonomy.
Kodiak AI goes public
In September, Kodiak became a public company.
More than seven years after Kodiak’s 2018 founding, that moment arrived as part of a merger with Ares Acquisition Corp. II. Going public bolstered our efforts to scale operations and commercialize our driverless solution. It also demonstrates Kodiak’s growing maturity, and the maturity of the AV industry as a whole.
Kodiakers gathered in New York City and were greeted with a Kodiak truck parked in Times Square. The milestone included founder and CEO Don Burnette ringing the opening bell on the Nasdaq stock exchange as the company’s shares were listed and now traded under the KDK ticker symbol.
Growth mode
As Kodiak deployed its driverless solution and began scaling operations, we grew our team to underpin that effort. By the end of the year, we’ll count 343 full-time Kodiakers.
That’s not all – Kodiak parents welcomed 17 new babies in 2025.
Strengthened existing partnerships …
We have partnered with leading logistics providers, and continued hauling freight for J.B. Hunt, Werner Enterprises, Martin Brower, and others. This work accelerates our progress toward launching driverless commercial service in long-haul applications.
We continued adapting our virtual driver for defense purposes and completed work on a $30 million contract with the U.S. Army.
… and built new ones
Much of that work is girded by partnerships with others that ensure our ability to grow and deliver at scale.
We announced in August the integration of NXP’s ISO 26262-compliant processors and interfaces into the architecture that powers the Kodiak Driver, improving its reliability and robustness.
To support our proprietary Assisted Autonomy technology, we partnered with Vay, a provider of hardware and software that enables low-latency communications and remote support in certain low-speed and defined scenarios, part of the functionality of our autonomous-driving solution.
In September, we showcased our partnership with global automotive supplier ZF, which helped us secure our supply chain with respect to steering systems and components that ensure redundancy in vehicle platforms, a safety-critical aspect of scaling the Kodiak Driver.
Later in the year, we highlighted our ongoing work with Verizon Business. Verizon’s connectivity and IoT data capabilities provide the backbone of an essential link between our command center and autonomous trucks deployed in remote locations like the Permian Basin. Deploying physical AI in the real world requires reliable, trusted partners, and Verizon bolsters our operational rigor as we scale.
Manufacturing autonomy at production speed
Kodiak unveiled a partnership with Roush Industries, a leading product-development and contract manufacturing provider, in June. Roush possesses deep expertise in manufacturing and is upfitting trucks with Kodiak’s modular and vehicle-agnostic hardware.
Since no OEMs have autonomy-ready vehicle platforms ready today, an upfit strategy has long been central to Kodiak’s go-to-market plans. Roush is now a cornerstone of that strategy. Working together, we can upfit vehicles with safety-critical redundancy, meet customer needs, and ultimately scale deployment of the Kodiak Driver.
A standout safety score
Safety is at the core of everything we do, and an independent safety evaluation issued in October showed how the Kodiak Driver can deliver significant safety benefits on U.S. roads.
Kodiak’s autonomous-driving system achieved the highest score in a safety assessment conducted by Nauto, a fleet-safety technology company that examined the performance of more than 1,000 commercial fleets in its network.
We earned perfect scores in three of four categories, and our overall score of 98 on Nauto’s Visually Enhanced Risk Assessment (VERA), in comparison to the average human-driving score of 78 in Nauto-equipped fleets.
Plugging into customer operations
Our goal is to fit our technology into our partners’ operations, and not ask them to change their workflows to accommodate us.
That philosophy is evident in our work with Werner. This year, Kodiak worked directly with Werner to integrate the Kodiak Driver into the company’s Transportation Management System (TMS). This allows autonomous trucks to be like any other in their fleet, fully visible and dispatchable inside Werner’s TMS.
Achieved technical and operational milestones
We added the ability to haul two trailers at the same time, a difficult maneuver even for seasoned human drivers. “Pulling doubles,” as it is called in the industry, is challenging because of both the added length and distinct behavior of the second trailer. This feature enhances our ability to support customer needs in the Permian Basin.
This fall, we introduced a new feature that leverages generative AI-based Vision Language Models to identify and address complex, edge-case scenarios that can be a challenge for more traditional perception techniques. This feature was part of a software update this fall that contributed to an overall reduction in the need for remote human support and improved our ability to safely scale our solution.
Early in the fourth quarter, we introduced our Autonomy Readiness Measure (ARM). This measures the percentage of claims and evidence in Kodiak’s safety case for driverless operations that are materially complete.
We have ARMs for distinct deployments. Our ARM for industrial applications, as you’d imagine, is 100% complete. Our ARM for long-haul autonomous trucking stood at 78% in November, and we anticipate making steady progress toward completing our ARM and launching long-haul driverless operations in the second half of 2026.
Dual-purpose tech that thrives in defense
Much like our firm belief that autonomy can deliver safety benefits on American roads, we think it will also reduce the need for putting soldiers in dangerous situations.
At the Tactical Warfighter Innovation Exchange (TWIX), a Kodiak Driver-powered truck conducted a simulated resupply mission and delivered emergency provisions to a forward-deployed air transport and showed the capability of our autonomous tactical vehicle to support the needs of the warfighter in combat. Leaders from CENTCOM and ARCENT gained an understanding of how Kodiak can ensure the delivery of supplies during long-range operations in contested environments.
In October, Kodiak participated in the U.S. Army’s XTechOverwatch demonstration, organized to showcase leading-edge technologies that ensure military readiness. Our team demonstrated how Kodiak-powered vehicles could function as fully integrated intelligence nodes that plug directly into the Army’s existing situational awareness technology.
The Kodiak Driver can autonomously support complex tactical missions—including assisting in the recovery of isolated personnel from forward positions and transporting them to designated evacuation points. Designed for complex terrain and time-sensitive scenarios, the Kodiak Driver can help reduce risk to personnel while extending operational reach. This is how AI-enabled autonomy can support tactical ground operations.
Established our Defense Advisory Council
In February, Kodiak launched its Defense Advisory Council to shape the strategy and deployment of Kodiak’s technology with the U.S. War Department. The council is chaired by retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Richard “Ross” Coffman, who joined the company as a strategic advisor.
Looking ahead to 2026
While we are proud of our accomplishments in 2025, we are confident that the best is yet to come. We believe 2026 will prove to be a breakthrough year that affirms Kodiak as the leader in Physical AI and believe autonomous trucking represents the tip of the spear of this Physical AI revolution.
We’ll continue fulfilling our initial, binding 100-truck order from Atlas. We’ll continue logging paid driverless hours and autonomous miles in our and our customers’ growing fleets. And we’ll continue to prepare for deploying driverless trucks on highways in the second half of 2026.
In short, we’re excited to continue blazing new trails at the forefront of integrating AI-powered autonomous driving solutions into the physical world. We’ll continue tackling the tough driving jobs that keep our economy moving. And we’ll see you down the road.
