This conversation examines physical artificial intelligence, AI and robotics in autonomous middle-mile trucking, focusing on commercial deployment and scaling.
Gautam Narang of Gatik leads the company with deep expertise in autonomous middle-mile logistics. Narang discusses Gatik's commercial milestones, reports over $600 million in contracted revenue, operates fully driverless services since mid last year across Texas Arkansas and Arizona and maintains a proven 100% safety record. They emphasize operational scaling and customer integration, noting plans to expand from dozens to hundreds of driverless trucks this year and to thousands thereafter while leveraging the Gatik Omni fleet management platform.
Narang highlights regulatory engagement in 29 deployable states and anticipates a national autonomous vehicle framework in the near term. Hosts John Furrier and Gemma Allen of theCUBE and NYSE Wired explore technology operations and customer integration strategies and assess implications for supply chain efficiency safety assurance and commercial deployment.
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Gautam Narang, Gatik
This conversation examines physical artificial intelligence, AI and robotics in autonomous middle-mile trucking, focusing on commercial deployment and scaling.
Gautam Narang of Gatik leads the company with deep expertise in autonomous middle-mile logistics. Narang discusses Gatik's commercial milestones, reports over $600 million in contracted revenue, operates fully driverless services since mid last year across Texas Arkansas and Arizona and maintains a proven 100% safety record. They emphasize operational scaling and customer integration, noting plans to expand from dozens to hundreds of driverless trucks this year and to thousands thereafter while leveraging the Gatik Omni fleet management platform.
Narang highlights regulatory engagement in 29 deployable states and anticipates a national autonomous vehicle framework in the near term. Hosts John Furrier and Gemma Allen of theCUBE and NYSE Wired explore technology operations and customer integration strategies and assess implications for supply chain efficiency safety assurance and commercial deployment.
>> Palo Alto studio connecting Silicon Valley and Wall Street. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here with Dave Dave Vellante, my co-host.
Gemma Allen
>> Welcome back to theCUBE Studio here at the New York Stock Exchange. I'm Gemma Allen with NYSE Wired and this is our physical AI and robotic series. Joining me now is a man who's going to talk all things autonomous vehicles, Gautam Narang, CEO and co-founder of Gatik. Welcome, Gautam.
Gautam Narang
>> Thank you so much for having me.
Gemma Allen
>> So you were here with us, God, back I think early fall. A lot has happened in the world since then, but I know a lot has happened in your business too. So maybe just to start, bring us up to speed on what's been happening for you and the team at Gatik.
Gautam Narang
>> Absolutely. I would say the last few months, since the start of this year has been super exciting for us and more broadly for the industry as well. So for us at the start of this year, we announced a massive milestone on the commercial front. So we shared that we have over $600 million in contracted revenue from some of the largest retailers, grocers, and CPG company. And then on top of that, on the technical front, we also shared that Gatik has been doing fully driver out operations or driverless operations without a driver or any human observer behind the wheel since middle of last year. And all of this is happening at a massive scale, right? So today we are live across multiple customers and multiple markets, specifically in Texas, Arkansas and Arizona. And yeah, like in the trucking space, to my knowledge, we are one of the only company, again, that is doing fully driverless operations on public roads in a commercial capacity in a scalable way across multiple customers and markets.
Gemma Allen
>> Wow. Well, congratulations. I've seen the brands you've been adding to your portfolio of clients. It's certainly very impressive, some big names there. When you look at that 600 million in promise or in contracts, what is the real pitch? Gautam, when you're going out to talk to these folks, say, "Listen, we can do this autonomously, no driver needed," what really do you think wins these deals for you?
Gautam Narang
>> Yeah. The value proposition is we allow our customers to move goods more frequently between their warehouses or distribution centers to a network of retail stores, right? And all of this is being driven by end consumer expectations. So all of us as end consumers, when we place an order, we expect that order to be delivered to us as soon as possible, as cheap as possible. And on top of that, we want the best experience. So that's the expectation on the consumer side. But the reality is there is a huge driver shortage that every customer of ours is experiencing today, right? So the exact number is over 80,000 drivers are needed in the supply chain in the logistics space. On top of that, the freight volume is increasing 50% by 2050. So you have these two extremes where on one hand, we want our orders faster, cheaper. On the other extreme, there aren't enough drivers to fulfill this demand. That's where we come in, right? So we are helping some of the largest brands and private fields in the world and we're allowing them to make deliveries to a particular store multiple times a week, all of this with the highest level of reliability and predictability across their supply chain.
Gemma Allen
>> Well, I am certainly guilty myself of ordering something and expecting it yesterday. So I'm definitely one of those customers. When you think about the kind of autonomous vehicle space in general, it's been a mission that we've been listening to and excited about for quite a while and I know it's had a couple of challenges in certain states. Waymo, I think is apparently coming to New York. I don't know how true that is, but they certainly have a very impressive CEO. State by state, you mentioned three states there. What is that process, that kind of policy, that regulation side of your life like? Are these constant conversations that are happening? What's the lobbying element, I guess, of this like for you?
Gautam Narang
>> Of course. So since Gatik started commercial operations, this was back in 2019, we have maintained a very close relationship with all the different stakeholders, especially the regulators at all levels, the local level, state level, and the federal level. And we see our role as informing and educating the regulators in the safest possible and scalable rollout of this technology across the nation. Today, the AV framework is at the state level, right? So there are specifically 29 states where Gatik can deploy the trucks, pull the driver out, and commercialize the service. And we continue to engage with the states beyond these 29 states so that we can continue supporting our future growth as well. Now on top of that, there is very strong momentum and excitement at the federal level as well, right? So the current administration is very favorable towards autonomous trucking and we do expect a national AV framework to be rolled out in the near term future, right? So a national coverage that will allow for safe and scalable rollout of this technology is in the near .
Gemma Allen
>> Wow. Let's get into the tech for a second. One thing I thought was quite interesting last year was a friend of mine was just wanted to stock C.H. Robinson, the large, you probably know them, large freight provider. And their stock had a really interesting moment because AI was actually very, very beneficial for their business in terms of running operations, running things more effectively, knowing who's free, when, where, what's going. A lot of this stuff that's being done very administratively, right? So in your business, this kind of tech opportunity is two sided. Obviously there's the tech opportunity of the actual physical AI itself, but also what it provides to these retailers in way of actually doing things more efficiently and to your point earlier in a much more compact and seamless manner, right? How are you kind of approaching those two arguments and is one, I guess, outpacing the other?
Gautam Narang
>> Well, for us, think of this as there is physical AI as an idea and then physical AI as a business, right? Our focus from day one has been how can we roll this out across some of the most complex supply chains in a scalable and the most seamless manner? We as a company are at a point where we have been able to prove that the technology works and is scalable. Our focus remains on handling the operational aspect of the rollout of the technology. So what that means and how that looks like is from a technology standpoint, before we pull the driver out, this was middle of last year, Gatik underwent a very rigorous and comprehensive independent safety audit, right? So we made a very public commitment that we'll only pull the driver out once our technology and our operations has been independently certified by safety auditors. And that's the assessment that we concluded middle of last year after which we started our operations, this was in June of last year. But maybe just to emphasize, some of the largest brands in the world are trusting Gatik who operate these trucks in a safe and reliable manner. And as you can imagine, they do their due diligence, right? And Gatik has had 100% safety record. Since we started our commercial operations in 2019, we have never been in any incident or any accident while the system was in autonomous mode. So that's basically the level of rigor and the safety bar that we have been able to achieve. And we are confident that as we continue scaling our driverless operations, continue moving freight for some of the largest brands in the world, we'll do that in a reliable and safe manner.
Gemma Allen
>> So when you think about scaling and the kind of future growth, we hear a lot about constraints, right? Compute, energy, all of the things that impact the world of data centers and the AI era we're in. I'm sure they also have huge impacts on physical AI and robotics. What are the key constraints in your business? What is the one thing you wish you could fix tomorrow?
Gautam Narang
>> Well, in terms of our focus, our focus remains on operations, meaning how do you scale this as quickly as possible? Technology we have been able to prove works and is scalable. We've also been able to prove that there is real commercial demand and obviously the $600 million contracted revenue, these are binding contracts for the next few years, is also proof that the demand and the interest is real. Our focus, as I mentioned earlier, remains on what's the fastest and the most seamless way in which we can deploy our trucks across very complex supply chains. And just to give you a sense of scale, today we have, this is what we announced with PepsiCo, over 40 trucks that are driverless across three different markets. As you can imagine, we have other major customers across different verticals like retail and grocery. We are working with some of the largest private fleets in the world and they're basically eager to adopt our solution in a very scalable way. We're looking at hundreds of trucks that would be driver out by the end of this year, and then we only do scaling from there as well.
Gemma Allen
>> So you onboarded a new client this week, I believe, or at least as announced this week, right? A very, very well known brand, PepsiCo.
Gautam Narang
>> Yes.
Gemma Allen
>> I mean, again, huge FMCG player, one of the most famous in the world and I guess they have huge scale in their operations. Talk to us about the actual onboarding process of working with Gatik. How long it takes to transfer a fleet to a fully autonomous model and what that kind of looks like. I assume it's maybe a incremental move or how quickly can this all happen?
Gautam Narang
>> Sure. Yeah. For us, the partnership with the PepsiCo has been since 2022, right? So we have been able to prove the technology within their operations over the last few years. What we shared with the world this week is we have driverless trucks on the road today across multiple markets and that we have a multi-year partnership. How we engage with our customers is obviously there's a very close collaboration in terms of how the staff at the customer location would interact with the driverless truck. So one of the core products that we have developed is what we call Gatik Omni. Think of that as our fleet management platform. So simply put, that's a connecting tissue across different data sources, right? So whatever is happening inside the warehouse, how does that impact my ETAs on the drop-off location? So it's the end-to-end visibility and insights that we share with the customers and they have the Omni app in their handheld devices. That's basically how they interact with the driverless truck. So the journey has been over the last few years, and that's exactly what we anticipate in the coming years and it's going to happen in phases, right? And as I mentioned, this year we are looking at hundreds of trucks across our different customer base. Next year in our mind, we'll be scaling that to thousands of trucks. The opportunity when it comes to autonomous trucking is huge. So Gatik is focused on the middle mile segment of supply chain. That opportunity is over $300 billion in U.S. and Canada. And the way we have designed the technology is so that we can go after the full trillion plus trucking market, right? So we are only getting started and the kind of scale that we are handling with customers like PepsiCo and others is super exciting and it will only continue to grow from here.
Gemma Allen
>> Wow. Well, you certainly have a huge TAM in your future. What are the key priorities? Where are you really focusing in on for the next, I guess, 12 months and globally too? Are you thinking about this from the perspective of beyond the U.S.? What is the longer term roadmap from the perspective of the product being rolled out in other jurisdictions?
Gautam Narang
>> Right. So it's an execution story from here, right? All we are trying to do is keep our heads down and meet the demand that we are seeing from the customers. So the focus remains on expanding our driverless footprint. Obviously the three markets, densifying those markets, but also we have plans to expand to other markets as well, right? So that remains the core focus. As we discussed, the opportunity in North America is huge, but there is a strong pull that we are seeing from international markets as well. We do believe that there'll be opportunities in those markets and we're evaluating opportunities, but yeah, our focus remains on meeting the customer need in North America, which as you highlighted, it's huge. The demand is somewhat through the roof and we'll share more updates along those lines with some of the other customer base that we are serving today as well.
Gemma Allen
>> Well, it's certainly a wonderful problem to have, Gautam, in terms of having to focus on just meeting the demand of where you're at right now. Wonderful to have you and we look forward to hearing about what those updates are in the not so distant future. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and NYSE Wired.
Gautam Narang
>> Gemma, thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Gemma Allen
>> I'm Gemma Allen here at theCUBE Studio at the New York Stock Exchange. This is NYSE Wired, Physical AI and Robotics. Thanks for watching.
>> Palo Alto studio connecting Silicon Valley and Wall Street. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here with Dave Dave Vellante, my co-host.
Gemma Allen
>> Welcome back to theCUBE Studio here at the New York Stock Exchange. I'm Gemma Allen with NYSE Wired and this is our physical AI and robotic series. Joining me now is a man who's going to talk all things autonomous vehicles, Gautam Narang, CEO and co-founder of Gatik. Welcome, Gautam.
Gautam Narang
>> Thank you so much for having me.
Gemma Allen
>> So you were here with us, God, back I think early fall. A lot has happened in the world since then, but I know a lot has happened in your business too. So maybe just to start, bring us up to speed on what's been happening for you and the team at Gatik.
Gautam Narang
>> Absolutely. I would say the last few months, since the start of this year has been super exciting for us and more broadly for the industry as well. So for us at the start of this year, we announced a massive milestone on the commercial front. So we shared that we have over $600 million in contracted revenue from some of the largest retailers, grocers, and CPG company. And then on top of that, on the technical front, we also shared that Gatik has been doing fully driver out operations or driverless operations without a driver or any human observer behind the wheel since middle of last year. And all of this is happening at a massive scale, right? So today we are live across multiple customers and multiple markets, specifically in Texas, Arkansas and Arizona. And yeah, like in the trucking space, to my knowledge, we are one of the only company, again, that is doing fully driverless operations on public roads in a commercial capacity in a scalable way across multiple customers and markets.
Gemma Allen
>> Wow. Well, congratulations. I've seen the brands you've been adding to your portfolio of clients. It's certainly very impressive, some big names there. When you look at that 600 million in promise or in contracts, what is the real pitch? Gautam, when you're going out to talk to these folks, say, "Listen, we can do this autonomously, no driver needed," what really do you think wins these deals for you?
Gautam Narang
>> Yeah. The value proposition is we allow our customers to move goods more frequently between their warehouses or distribution centers to a network of retail stores, right? And all of this is being driven by end consumer expectations. So all of us as end consumers, when we place an order, we expect that order to be delivered to us as soon as possible, as cheap as possible. And on top of that, we want the best experience. So that's the expectation on the consumer side. But the reality is there is a huge driver shortage that every customer of ours is experiencing today, right? So the exact number is over 80,000 drivers are needed in the supply chain in the logistics space. On top of that, the freight volume is increasing 50% by 2050. So you have these two extremes where on one hand, we want our orders faster, cheaper. On the other extreme, there aren't enough drivers to fulfill this demand. That's where we come in, right? So we are helping some of the largest brands and private fields in the world and we're allowing them to make deliveries to a particular store multiple times a week, all of this with the highest level of reliability and predictability across their supply chain.
Gemma Allen
>> Well, I am certainly guilty myself of ordering something and expecting it yesterday. So I'm definitely one of those customers. When you think about the kind of autonomous vehicle space in general, it's been a mission that we've been listening to and excited about for quite a while and I know it's had a couple of challenges in certain states. Waymo, I think is apparently coming to New York. I don't know how true that is, but they certainly have a very impressive CEO. State by state, you mentioned three states there. What is that process, that kind of policy, that regulation side of your life like? Are these constant conversations that are happening? What's the lobbying element, I guess, of this like for you?
Gautam Narang
>> Of course. So since Gatik started commercial operations, this was back in 2019, we have maintained a very close relationship with all the different stakeholders, especially the regulators at all levels, the local level, state level, and the federal level. And we see our role as informing and educating the regulators in the safest possible and scalable rollout of this technology across the nation. Today, the AV framework is at the state level, right? So there are specifically 29 states where Gatik can deploy the trucks, pull the driver out, and commercialize the service. And we continue to engage with the states beyond these 29 states so that we can continue supporting our future growth as well. Now on top of that, there is very strong momentum and excitement at the federal level as well, right? So the current administration is very favorable towards autonomous trucking and we do expect a national AV framework to be rolled out in the near term future, right? So a national coverage that will allow for safe and scalable rollout of this technology is in the near .
Gemma Allen
>> Wow. Let's get into the tech for a second. One thing I thought was quite interesting last year was a friend of mine was just wanted to stock C.H. Robinson, the large, you probably know them, large freight provider. And their stock had a really interesting moment because AI was actually very, very beneficial for their business in terms of running operations, running things more effectively, knowing who's free, when, where, what's going. A lot of this stuff that's being done very administratively, right? So in your business, this kind of tech opportunity is two sided. Obviously there's the tech opportunity of the actual physical AI itself, but also what it provides to these retailers in way of actually doing things more efficiently and to your point earlier in a much more compact and seamless manner, right? How are you kind of approaching those two arguments and is one, I guess, outpacing the other?
Gautam Narang
>> Well, for us, think of this as there is physical AI as an idea and then physical AI as a business, right? Our focus from day one has been how can we roll this out across some of the most complex supply chains in a scalable and the most seamless manner? We as a company are at a point where we have been able to prove that the technology works and is scalable. Our focus remains on handling the operational aspect of the rollout of the technology. So what that means and how that looks like is from a technology standpoint, before we pull the driver out, this was middle of last year, Gatik underwent a very rigorous and comprehensive independent safety audit, right? So we made a very public commitment that we'll only pull the driver out once our technology and our operations has been independently certified by safety auditors. And that's the assessment that we concluded middle of last year after which we started our operations, this was in June of last year. But maybe just to emphasize, some of the largest brands in the world are trusting Gatik who operate these trucks in a safe and reliable manner. And as you can imagine, they do their due diligence, right? And Gatik has had 100% safety record. Since we started our commercial operations in 2019, we have never been in any incident or any accident while the system was in autonomous mode. So that's basically the level of rigor and the safety bar that we have been able to achieve. And we are confident that as we continue scaling our driverless operations, continue moving freight for some of the largest brands in the world, we'll do that in a reliable and safe manner.
Gemma Allen
>> So when you think about scaling and the kind of future growth, we hear a lot about constraints, right? Compute, energy, all of the things that impact the world of data centers and the AI era we're in. I'm sure they also have huge impacts on physical AI and robotics. What are the key constraints in your business? What is the one thing you wish you could fix tomorrow?
Gautam Narang
>> Well, in terms of our focus, our focus remains on operations, meaning how do you scale this as quickly as possible? Technology we have been able to prove works and is scalable. We've also been able to prove that there is real commercial demand and obviously the $600 million contracted revenue, these are binding contracts for the next few years, is also proof that the demand and the interest is real. Our focus, as I mentioned earlier, remains on what's the fastest and the most seamless way in which we can deploy our trucks across very complex supply chains. And just to give you a sense of scale, today we have, this is what we announced with PepsiCo, over 40 trucks that are driverless across three different markets. As you can imagine, we have other major customers across different verticals like retail and grocery. We are working with some of the largest private fleets in the world and they're basically eager to adopt our solution in a very scalable way. We're looking at hundreds of trucks that would be driver out by the end of this year, and then we only do scaling from there as well.
Gemma Allen
>> So you onboarded a new client this week, I believe, or at least as announced this week, right? A very, very well known brand, PepsiCo.
Gautam Narang
>> Yes.
Gemma Allen
>> I mean, again, huge FMCG player, one of the most famous in the world and I guess they have huge scale in their operations. Talk to us about the actual onboarding process of working with Gatik. How long it takes to transfer a fleet to a fully autonomous model and what that kind of looks like. I assume it's maybe a incremental move or how quickly can this all happen?
Gautam Narang
>> Sure. Yeah. For us, the partnership with the PepsiCo has been since 2022, right? So we have been able to prove the technology within their operations over the last few years. What we shared with the world this week is we have driverless trucks on the road today across multiple markets and that we have a multi-year partnership. How we engage with our customers is obviously there's a very close collaboration in terms of how the staff at the customer location would interact with the driverless truck. So one of the core products that we have developed is what we call Gatik Omni. Think of that as our fleet management platform. So simply put, that's a connecting tissue across different data sources, right? So whatever is happening inside the warehouse, how does that impact my ETAs on the drop-off location? So it's the end-to-end visibility and insights that we share with the customers and they have the Omni app in their handheld devices. That's basically how they interact with the driverless truck. So the journey has been over the last few years, and that's exactly what we anticipate in the coming years and it's going to happen in phases, right? And as I mentioned, this year we are looking at hundreds of trucks across our different customer base. Next year in our mind, we'll be scaling that to thousands of trucks. The opportunity when it comes to autonomous trucking is huge. So Gatik is focused on the middle mile segment of supply chain. That opportunity is over $300 billion in U.S. and Canada. And the way we have designed the technology is so that we can go after the full trillion plus trucking market, right? So we are only getting started and the kind of scale that we are handling with customers like PepsiCo and others is super exciting and it will only continue to grow from here.
Gemma Allen
>> Wow. Well, you certainly have a huge TAM in your future. What are the key priorities? Where are you really focusing in on for the next, I guess, 12 months and globally too? Are you thinking about this from the perspective of beyond the U.S.? What is the longer term roadmap from the perspective of the product being rolled out in other jurisdictions?
Gautam Narang
>> Right. So it's an execution story from here, right? All we are trying to do is keep our heads down and meet the demand that we are seeing from the customers. So the focus remains on expanding our driverless footprint. Obviously the three markets, densifying those markets, but also we have plans to expand to other markets as well, right? So that remains the core focus. As we discussed, the opportunity in North America is huge, but there is a strong pull that we are seeing from international markets as well. We do believe that there'll be opportunities in those markets and we're evaluating opportunities, but yeah, our focus remains on meeting the customer need in North America, which as you highlighted, it's huge. The demand is somewhat through the roof and we'll share more updates along those lines with some of the other customer base that we are serving today as well.
Gemma Allen
>> Well, it's certainly a wonderful problem to have, Gautam, in terms of having to focus on just meeting the demand of where you're at right now. Wonderful to have you and we look forward to hearing about what those updates are in the not so distant future. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and NYSE Wired.
Gautam Narang
>> Gemma, thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Gemma Allen
>> I'm Gemma Allen here at theCUBE Studio at the New York Stock Exchange. This is NYSE Wired, Physical AI and Robotics. Thanks for watching.
John Furrier
Gemma Allen