As it scales its autonomous solutions, Golden startup Outrider has opened a new 200,000 square foot distribution yard in Colorado to test and mimic the operations of its customers.
Located in Brighton, the distribution yard has 49 dock doors and operates 16 hours per day, five days per week. Ultimately, the site will expand to 24-hour operation in 2022. This facility is being used to validate Outrider’s autonomous distribution yard capabilities, specifically for supporting the company’s customer deployments.
The expansion comes as Outrider is working with nine enterprise customers in industries such as consumer packaged goods, retail and e-commerce, manufacturing, package shipping and intermodal rail.
The fast-growing startup outgrew its initial test facility in Golden, needing a larger industrial space to support its vision.
“Outrider’s new Advanced Testing Facility mimics the distribution yards of our Fortune 500 customers,” Andrew Smith, founder and CEO at Outrider, said in a statement. “Operating our yard automation technologies under real-world conditions at both our test site and customer sites enables Outrider to deliver the most reliable and robust yard automation solution in the market. At this new facility, the Outrider System also completes end-of-line testing and calibration before shipping to our customers.”
Since its launch from stealth in 2020, the company has already raised $118 million in venture funding and built a team of nearly 140 employees.
Outrider’s mission is to automate the manual aspects of yard operations. Those tasks include moving trailers around the yard, moving trailers to and from loading docks, hitching and unhitching trailers, connecting and disconnecting trailer brake lines and monitoring trailer locations.
To automate those tasks, the company has built a three-part system that includes management software, electric autonomous vehicles and site infrastructure. Outrider recently added to its offering with the announcement of a patent-pending automated tractor-trailer hitching solution.
Inside the new Brighton facility, Outrider is using a 152,000-square-foot warehouse to assemble its system, as it converts electric yard trucks into autonomous vehicles operating on its proprietary software.
Despite the new expansion, Outrider said its headquarters will remain in Golden.
The company’s most recent venture round came in October 2020, a $65 million in Series B funding led by Koch Disruptive Technologies. Other existing investors increased their investments, including NEA, 8VC and Prologis Ventures. New investors included Henry Crown and Co. and Evolv Ventures.
Regarding future fundraising, Smith told Denver Business Journal in July that the company is “evaluating options” and is in a “strong financial position.”
