Ike Hits the Road

Last week we announced a partnership with Ike, a new self-driving truck company led by industry veterans in engineering, autonomy, and product — a real dream team of autonomous trucking.

The deal was this: we gave Ike a copy of our autonomy and infrastructure software and, in exchange, Nuro got an equity stake in Ike. While we are separate companies, we will stay friendly and are rooting for each other’s success.

We never planned on licensing our technology — in fact as far as we know this deal is the first of its kind in the self-driving world. But when we saw how our technology could help Ike, paired with our belief in the team that Alden, Nancy and Jur had assembled, it was an easy decision.

Ike and Nuro share important values. Ike believes in our mission of accelerating the benefits of robotics for everyday life. For them, that means making trucks safer, truckers more valuable, and the trucking industry more efficient. We’re both committed to safety at the core of our products and our operations. And we both believe self-driving vehicles that transport goods are a great way to begin a shift toward a driverless future.

At Nuro, we get to maintain our focus on creating an on-road, fully autonomous goods transportation service while the Ike team gets a head start with our tech to tackle the challenge of big rig autonomous highway driving.

We’re excited to see Ike launch and help build a future with safer roads and more affordable transportation for everyone. Congrats Ike!

Learn more about Ike + Nuro in Wired.