Kodiak AI announced it will supply 75 self‑driving trucks to DTL Transport starting in 2028. This agreement is Kodiak’s first binding commercial contract for driverless long‑haul trucks that will operate on public highways.
The timing and service rollout
The contract was announced on Wednesday, shortly before a key milestone in Kodiak’s roadmap: the company plans to remove human safety operators from its cabs and begin a driverless interstate service in December. Kodiak, which went public in September 2025, intends to launch that service by hauling goods for Ikea on Interstate 45 between Dallas and Houston.
DTL Transport is a mid‑market California carrier that moves fresh produce and other goods for grocery chains. DTL plans to deploy the self‑driving trucks on several interstate routes, beginning with Dallas to El Paso, Texas, and Interstate 20 between Dallas and Atlanta. Kodiak has already conducted testing and some operations on both of these routes.
Business model context and the move to DaaS
Don Burnette, Kodiak’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview: “One of the things that we love about mid‑market carriers (like DTL) is that they are able to move with fast execution speed, much more at the speed of a startup or a small company or a tech company like Kodiak, and that they just want to get stuff done. It’s easier for them to integrate into their fleet because they’re not as large, and we think that this is a real turning point for the self‑driving industry in general.”
Today Kodiak serves several customers under a Trucking‑as‑a‑Service (TaaS) model, including Charger USA, Roehl Transport, and Werner Enterprises. Under TaaS, Kodiak owns and operates the self‑driving trucks as a third‑party carrier for other companies and currently carries freight for those customers on a few Texas routes. Burnette described these operations as still being in pilot stage.
Kodiak’s long‑term goal is to transition to a Driver‑as‑a‑Service (DaaS) model in which customers own and operate the trucks while Kodiak licenses its technology and charges customers by the mile over the contract term. DTL is Kodiak’s first on‑highway DaaS customer; that relationship emerged after a pilot last month in California, during which Kodiak autonomously hauled perishable goods for DTL for about 225 miles along Interstate 5 and California State Route 99 between Fresno and Los Angeles, with a human safety operator in the cab.
Earlier commercial contract and the Permian Basin program
Atlas Energy Solutions has been a DaaS customer since 2024. Technically Atlas was Kodiak’s first binding commercial customer, but Atlas’s driverless trucks operate off‑road in the remote Permian Basin of West Texas. Atlas currently owns and operates 35 driverless trucks equipped with Kodiak’s system; Burnette said Kodiak expects there could be as many as 100 in service there by mid‑2027.
Financial implications
Kodiak did not disclose the monetary value of the DTL Transport deal. However, Kodiak’s public 2025 investor presentation gives a sense of potential contract economics: the company projected annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $150,000 to $190,000 per truck. That projection assumes roughly $0.97 per mile in licensing fees (consistent with current human driver costs per mile), about 225,000 miles driven per truck per year, and other factors.
If those assumptions hold, a 75‑truck deployment could generate on the order of $11.2 million in annual recurring revenue once all vehicles are delivered.
Why the deal matters
The contract provides Kodiak with a commercial benchmark and potential revenue lift at a time when its stock has fallen 87% from its opening‑day price. It also advances Kodiak’s strategy to become an asset‑light technology supplier — selling its software and systems to fleet operators rather than owning and running all vehicles itself.
Summary
The 75‑truck agreement with DTL Transport represents a milestone for Kodiak’s commercialization of driverless highway operations: it is the company’s first binding on‑highway DaaS deal and aligns with its plan to start driverless interstate service in December. Based on Kodiak’s own 2025 projections, the contract could translate into multimillion‑dollar annual recurring revenue if the company’s per‑truck assumptions are realized.
