Colorado’s Outrider Raises $65M Series B

Golden, Colorado-based Outrider has landed $65 million in a Series B round of funding. 

The company focuses on making distribution yards–which face a number of issues–more efficient. Those issues include congestion of road trucks, lost trailers, and the right trailer not getting to the right loading dock at the correct time, according to Outrider CEO Andrew Smith.

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“Within these distribution centers, these are real pain points of the supply chain,” Smith said in an interview with Crunchbase News. 

Outrider is aiming to increase efficiency through its three-part system, which consists of autonomous vehicles, cloud-based management software, and site infrastructure.

“We’re very focused on thinking about what the next iteration of distribution looks like,” Smith said. “Not putting a Band-Aid on the problem.”

For that reason, the company has been focused on layering autonomy exclusively on electric vehicle platforms. Electric yard trucks have just started to enter the market in the past few years, but they are the future, Smith said.

Koch Disruptive Technologies led the round, with participation from existing investors NEA, 8VC 1 and Prologis Ventures. New investors Henry Crown and Company and Evolv Ventures also joined for the round, which brings Outrider’s total funding to $118 million. 

Outrider has deployed pilot programs for designated areas of yards, but will now expand them to encompass entire yards, Smith said. The new funding will be used to continue to deploy and support Outrider’s systems for customers. Smith declined to name specific customers, but said Outrider works with Fortune 500 companies, which together account for thousands of yards.

The Series B is Koch Disruptive Technologies’ second investment in the company. Georgia-Pacific, which is part of Koch Industries, was Outrider’s first customer, according to Koch Disruptive Technologies’ managing director Byron Knight.

Koch can help Outrider scale commercially within Koch as a customer, but also through the Koch network.

“We think about it as, ‘How can we be a commercial customer, a supplier but also a capability provider?’” Knight said. Those capabilities could be anything from legal resources, regulatory resources to HR resources through Koch Labs, Knight said.

Outrider last raised money with a $53 million Series A led by 8VC in February 2019.

Illustration: Dom Guzman