We are still likely many years away from wide-scale deployment, let alone adoption, of fully autonomous vehicles on our streets, but in the meantime, autonomous vehicle companies focusing on closed-campus environments continue to raise funding and make headway in building self-driving on a smaller scale.
In the latest, a startup called Venti Technologies has raised $28.8 million, a Series A that it plans to use to continue building its software, partner with third parties for hardware (that is, vehicles), and to secure more deals.
Its target customer comes from the wide range of supply chain businesses that operate across warehouses, ports and other shipping and logistics environments where vehicles — currently driven by humans — are central to operations. Venti’s bet is that even with the high prices associated with self-driving vehicles, industrial customers, a market that generates billions in revenues annually, will pay up, because it will pay off for them in the long term.
“If you have a big logistics facility where you run vehicles, the largest cost is human capital: drivers,” Dr. Heidi Wyle, Venti’s CEO and co-founder, said in an interview. “Our customers are telling us that they expect to save over 50% of their operations costs with self-driving vehicles. Think they will have huge savings.”
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