Nvidia, Isuzu, and Gatik are collaborating to bring autonomous middle-mile logistics to market.
Gatik, the dominant force in autonomous middle-mile logistics, today announced it will develop and deploy NVIDIA DRIVE AGX in-vehicle compute architecture across its fleet of class 6 and class 7 Freight-Only (driverless) vehicles. The company says this collaboration will accelerate the deployment of Level 4 autonomous trucks at scale across new markets for Gatik’s Fortune 500 customers including Walmart, Kroger and Tyson Foods.
“We are excited to collaborate with NVIDIA and integrate their world-class expertise and groundbreaking technology into Isuzu’s Production-Ready Vehicle Platform, as we enter our next phase of commercial growth,” said Gautam Narang, CEO of Gatik. “NVIDIA’s next-generation computing architecture will provide critical support to the onboard AI-processing necessary for deploying Gatik’s Freight-Only operations safely and at scale. This partnership builds on our existing collaboration with Isuzu North America Corporation and marks a significant step forward in our mission to commercialize a safe, scalable, and efficient autonomous transportation service across the middle-mile.”
Specifically, Gatik will use NVIDIA DRIVE AGX accelerated by the DRIVE Thor system-on-a-chip (SoC) to serve as the AI brain for these next-generation self-driving trucks. Now shipping to the global transportation market, the automotive-grade DRIVE AGX Thor, which runs on the safety-certified DriveOS operating system, is built on the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture. Packing up to one quadrillion operations per second of high-performance compute, DRIVE AGX Thor helps enable the development and deployment of safe, autonomous trucks and other vehicles at scale.
“The combination of our AI-driven solutions and Gatik’s autonomous technology that’s purpose built for the middle mile will help tackle the trucking industry’s challenges such as rising e-commerce demand, driver shortages, and operational costs – while enabling a smarter, more sustainable transportation ecosystem,” said Rishi Dhall, vice president of automotive at NVIDIA. “Our automotive-grade DRIVE AGX platform built on the DRIVE Thor SoC delivers the massive compute power essential for secure and reliable autonomous operations, making roads safer and logistics more efficient, at scale.”
Gatik’s strategic development efforts with NVIDIA build on the company’s existing long-term collaboration with Isuzu North America Corporation. The two companies have been working together since 2021 to accelerate the development of autonomous driving solutions. Since 2024, Gatik and Isuzu North America Corporation have worked collaboratively with an aim to commercialize Freight-Only operations at scale.
Gatik is collaborating with other industry partners including Cummins, Ryder, and Goodyear.
In 2021, Gatik launched the world’s first driverless commercial transportation service with Walmart.
Today, Gatik’s medium-duty autonomous trucks are commercially deployed in multiple markets including Texas, Arkansas, Arizona, and Ontario. Founded in 2017 by veterans of the autonomous technology industry, the company has offices in Mountain View, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix, and Toronto.
Currently, over one hundred trucks are in daily operations across all of Gatik’s customers and in the coming quarters this will ramp up.
Last month, Isuzu North America Corp. announced plans to invest $280 million to establish a commercial electric vehicle assembly plant in Piedmont, South Carolina. Separately, Gatik and Isuzu North America have said that a dedicated production facility to mass produce L4-capable autonomous trucks is being set up. In an interview, Gatik noted that once their vehicles start rolling off the assembly line, the company will be deploying thousands of autonomous trucks for its customer base by the end of 2027.
As Gatik puts it, collaborations including Isuzu North America and NVIDIA represent a significant development in commercializing autonomous trucking at scale. Gatik notes production and deployment of their Freight-Only vehicles will enable the company to address the acute needs and expectations of its customers, thus serving their end consumers with higher frequency and lower costs.
Gatik’s timing of a 2027 production launch aligns with companies bring autonomous Class 8 (tractor-trailer) trucking to the market. Aurora, Plus, and Torc have stated mass production of their vehicles will be rolling off the assembly lines of their production customers that year.
Computing capability and architecture is fundamental to autonomous driving. But only through large scale production can we expect the much-promised revolution in freight movement that autonomy promises. Today’s news shows that both are rolling along steadily.
Disclosure: Richard Bishop is an Advisor to and/or an equity holder in the following companies mentioned in this article: Aurora, Gatik, Plus.
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