Plenty of people use mapping apps such as Google Maps and Waze to find the most efficient routes to work or other destinations.
But the trucking industry needs something a bit more tailored to help guide drivers on the best routes, find optimal loads to deliver and ensure they have time to be at home with family and friends.
That's where Austin-based trucking startup The Ai Fleet Inc. comes in. The company, which does business as AIfleet, uses customized artificial intelligence to help boost truck utilization, manage loading and routes and help boost revenue for its truckers. It offers its drivers relatively new trucks, guaranteed weekly pay and a minimum of 34 hours per week at home.
In 2021, the company, led by co-founder and CEO Marc El Khoury, landed a $21 million series A investment. And on Sept. 10, it announced that it has added to that with a $16.6 million series B funding round. The investment is intended to help continue growth, make key hires and develop new products. It has now raised nearly $50 million in total.
Investors in the new round include Tom Williams at Heron Rock, as well as Volvo Group Venture Capital, Obvious Ventures, Ibex Investors, Compound, Winthrop Square and Cooley.
Aifleet currently has about 275 employees, including 40 based in Austin, a company spokesperson said.
The company, which has an 8,000-square-foot office in downtown Austin and its main yard in Hutto, is currently hiring for people operations, fleet operations, sales and frontend and backend engineers.
“The full truckload market size is $400 billion, but it’s a massively inefficient and fragmented market with half a million carriers, where even the biggest has less than 1% of the market," El Khoury stated. "As truck utilization has trended downward since 2018, AIfleet has developed technology to mitigate the utilization problem and to radically improve trucking efficiencies, while bringing real humanity back to the driver experience."
The company says that its tech helps its fleet achieve 40%-plus higher utilization than the industry average, which leads to better profit. The startup is also looking into new AI applications, as well electric and autonomous technologies.
Investor Tom Williams said the company is poised to become the largest and most profitable truckload carrier in the nation.
It's "the first company to achieve tech-driven economies of scale: the more the company grows, the lower its cost per mile," he stated. "In fact, we expect they will be profitable within this round of funding."
The startup's growth and funding come as Austin's transportation and logistics tech ecosystem continues to grow. For example, Outpost, a startup that is acquiring sites for truck parking and maintenance, raised $12 million earlier this year. Meanwhile, navigational tech company Tern AI landed $4.4M for its GPS alternative. And several shipping and logistics companies, including Dropoff, uShip, Overhaul, Arrive Logistics and Fetch Package, have been growing in Austin for years.
"It's a great location because on the startup side you attract leading edge talent, innovative thinkers and hungry employees with a drive to build something totally new," AIfleet's head of marketing, Samantha Brody, said in an email. "On the trucking side, it's a great hub because of the location. Trucks are coming from both coasts and traversing the country so it's central for drivers and generally one of the biggest hubs for freight."
