Kodiak Robotics goes public

AACT shareholders approved the merger between Kodiak Robotics and AACT on Sept. 23, 2025, with AACT to be renamed to Kodiak AI, Inc. Building up to the merger, Kodiak and AACT received over $212.5 million from “certain institutional investors,” according to a press release, including $145 million in PIPE funding and about $62.9 million in trust cash from AACT. This brings funding commitments to the joined companies since April to about $220 million, while Kodiak itself is valued at about $2.5 billion.

“Going public with the support of our partners at AACT marks an important step in Kodiak’s journey to help transform how freight moves by providing our driverless solution to customers,” said Don Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak. “The Kodiak Driver is already on the road, safely and reliably delivering freight every day for paying customers without a human in the cab. Our driverless operations show that autonomy is no longer a future promise but a reality today.”

The company began trading under the ticket symbols “KDK” and “KDKRW” on Sept. 25, 2025, displaying a Kodiak Driver-powered truck in Times Square and ringing the Nasdaq opening bell.

The path to public ownership

When Fleet Maintenance last checked in with Kodiak in March 2024, the company was on the heels of five years of AV testing, and was next aiming to collect more on-the-road data for the system.

“We need to finish building what we call [AVs’] safety case, which is basically the proof that this system is safer than a human,” Kodiak’s Goff explained at the time. “It’s really a steady accumulation of data that shows we can handle [a] very wide range of scenarios, we understand what is and is not likely to happen on the road, and we’re prepared for it.”

Since then, the company has certainly gained those miles. In July 2024, Atlas Energy Solutions used the Kodiak Driver platform to deliver frac sand in West Texas’ Permian Basin, a 21-mile trip. In 2025, Atlas placed an order for 100 autonomous trucks, and, according to Kodiak, runs its fleet of 8 Kodiak Driver vehicles up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Additionally, in August 2024, Kodiak reported that its partnership with J.B. Hunt Transport Services and Bridgestone Americas had covered 50,000 long-haul trucking miles delivering passenger car tires between South Carolina and Dallas. Those delivery trucks were Kenworth T680 sleeper cabs with Bridgestone M719 drive tires and R213 steer tires.

Kodiak also partnered with upfitter Roush Industries in June 2025 to scale Kodiak Driver-equipped truck upfitting. Roush delivered the first of these upfit trucks to Atlas Energy Solutions in August 2025. Meanwhile, Kodiak continued to make on-highway deliveries for companies such as Maersk, IKEA, C.R. England, and more, the company said.

But as Kodiak has grown its production, the patchwork regulatory environment for autonomous vehicles varies by state.

For example, in California, CA A 33 and CA S 511, which prohibits fully driverless delivery vehicles and calls for developing AV licensing for operation, respectively, are both pending, but Colorado’s governor recently vetoed CO H 1122 at the end of May, which prohibited someone from using an AV system to drive a commercial vehicle unless a driver with a CDL is in the truck. And on the East Coast, New Jersey’s NJ A 1589, which permits testing and using AVs on state roadways under certain circumstances, is still pending.