Humble Robotics raises $24M from Eclipse to build autonomous cabless electric freight trucks

Thank you so much for coming on. We'll talk to you soon, Gary.

Goodbye.

Uh later in the show, we'll be telling you about a local man who grew a 900 lb pumpkin in his backyard, and we'll tell you what it means for AI scaling laws. But up next, we have Humble Robotics. The founder and CEO is in the waiting room. Let's bring in a y'all Cohen to the TBP and Ultradome. How are you doing?

What's going on?

Great. How are you doing, guys?

We're doing great. We're having We're having a great

show. Having a show.

What's going on in the background?

Yeah. Take us on a little tour. What's going on?

You can see the truck that we built. The vehicle that we build, it is a class A electric autonomous uh vehicle for moving freight.

But I actually I want to hear about this 900lb pumpkin. When do I bring about that? That's actually

it applies to your business. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In order you started your demo was probably the equivalent of a 45 lb pumpkin. Maybe that truck in the back is a 300lb pumpkin. But this is all in service of getting to the 900 lb pumpkin, the elusive 900lb pumpkin. And you raised some money to help you build that vision. How much did you raise? Who's it from? Tell me about the round.

Yes. Okay. So, we raised $24 million and amazing.

Clearing order.

Continue.

That's so sat It's so satisfying. Really, it's great. Okay. We We raised 24 million. The lead investor was Eclipse.

Fantastic. Uh we also had we also had EIP in there as well as some other other friends. So yeah, it was a great round for us.

24 million. It sounds like a really solid

one of the highest signal

probably the highest signal if you're building in robotics.

Uh at the same time you're building something big in robotics. Uh $24 million. That's great for a seed, but how how much does it cost to build one of these? What what are the comps like? uh what what what will the next couple years like uh be like of actually getting these on the road?

Yeah. So 24 million is a start, right? It's uh we are we're doing hardware, we're doing robotics, we're doing autonomy software

that that does cost money, but it costs way less than it used to. I think you know you look at some of the the the players in the space and you know Whimo took a very long road, spent a lot of capital, but we're standing on the shoulders of giants now, right? A lot of work has been done in this space. I've been working in this space for 10 11 years now on autonomous free and we

we get we get the benefit I love it. We get the benefit of of of a lot of work that's been done in many and over the years and so it's just far cheaper than it used to to sort of think about a great new idea um and scale it and scale into production.

Okay. Talk about the key trade-offs. Uh no cab uh no driver. Uh

are you pro LAR? Are you pro tea operation? like what are you going to do a crawl, walk, run thing? Is it a straight shot to full self-driving? What's the thesis?

Yeah, great. So, uh we you know we're not dogmatic about technology here at all. It's just what's the best technology that we could use at any moment.

Most of my career has been spent working on LAR technology, but actually where we see vision based tech on cameras is incredible right now. I think especially in the last year or two. This is uh

this I always joke with our head of Tommy. I have seven startups under my belt now. That's the second one I founded. And so we've been

kind of doing a lot over the many years. This is the first time the company's really been vision camera focused in autonomy for me. And what I'm seeing on that side is incredible. It's like just it's it's honestly kind of magic. Yeah. Um but we still take the same approach that you see in autonomy, right? It is a uh it is a what you say crawl crawl run. Yeah. Um

we we take that approach too, right? First you test in private roads and tracks. You you get you validate the hardware and the software together and then you from there you uh you start pilots you supervise those pilots but we will take any technology that is beneficial for the project for the program and we'll apply it. That's the that's the idea.

Uh average 18-wheeler costs something like $120,000 $200,000 maybe 275 at the high end. Uh do you need to be at that price point? Can you go higher? Do you have flexibility there? And then the actual autonomy package. I feel like you could literally strap an iPhone to every possible vantage point. Uh, and you don't need to do that because you can just buy the actual uh lenses and cameras. So the the the cost of the vision stack has to be pretty low. But is are there GPUs on board? Are you doing ondevice inference? Like what's the economic balance? How is this how should a customer even think about this in a different mindset?

Yeah. So, so what what do you get from removing the cab, right? What's the benefit of having a cabless vehicle other than it's it's cool?

I think when we were conceiving the project, the question was, how do we move freight? Given where technology is, how do we move freight at the lowest possible cost, right? And the lowest possible cost to me was okay, we we think about making it uh it's autonomous, right? So, we can save about a dollar per mile there. We we make it electric, right? So, that that lowers the maintenance cost. And now, especially with like some of the volatile fuel issues, you know, we get benefit there, right? Um, and you know the cab itself is is cost to the equipment that is necessary in autonomous world. And so by removing the cab, you make the whole vehicle lighter and you make the vehicle less expensive. And so for me, the target is we want to have the equipment be comparable in price to what you see a tractor and a trailer today because this is effectively combining a tractor and trailer together, right? It's it's it's both the the semi-truck part and the trailer part in combination, right? And this for the 40ft version of it that we're looking at. Um, so we want the equipment cost to be comparable and then the cost per mile is just dramatically lower. That's the idea.

Yeah. Uh, how do you think about supporting infrastructure? I mean, there was a massive buildout of charging infrastructure as Tesla ramped. Is that

beneficial? Is that enough? Is there a lot more that needs to be done? I imagine even if I just have a warehouse, uh I might need to check if my warehouse is compatible with a cabless delivery uh and doesn't have, you know, the wrong configuration to be able to puzzle piece in the the the container.

Yeah, that's right. And actually part of the reason that we launched I mean the company is very young. We're we're we started about eight months ago, right? And we built this vehicle very quickly.

Um so yeah, we have a we have an absolutely killer team. They're they're the most fantastic people I've ever worked with and uh we we tried to move very quickly and we launched you know pretty early in the journey we were public about what we were doing and the reason is that you want to build with your customers. It's really important in freight to operate within the constraints of the logistics space and understand what people need and and how they operate. So, we we're being public about what we're doing because it's our message to our our our customers that we work with them on on that front. And that goes from everything from how does this vehicle load go back up into a docking area. It's one of the advantages of our vehicle, by the way. It's like we could put cameras behind it. We could back up into docks, right? And so, how do we how do we uh organize that kind of effort with them? How do we think about charging? How do we think about, you know, plugging into their uh their software, right? which, you know, sometimes every shipper has a different uh software stack that we have to work with. So, we we're starting those conversations really early. Um, and as a company, we just move very fast.

What's it going to take to get you on X?

On X? I actually I actually signed up for an X account right before the launch. I'm on it. I just I just need to figure out how to use it. But, but I'm there. I'm there. I'm here.

Yes. Win. We'll tell Nikita. One more user. Make it happen. Uh,

one more. for Nikita. Yeah.

Yeah. Where where is the company based? Where what does actually scaling the company look like? Uh are you going to make Detroit great again? Can we do something over there? Motor City. What are we thinking?

We're in San Francisco. We're in downtown San Francisco. And actually when you walk into this warehouse, you're greeted by this 40 foot vehicle, which is like uh before we were public, you know, people would walk into our warehouse and their eyes would just get really big. They're like, "What is happening in this space right now?" Yeah.

Um, but uh, you know, we're we're in San Francisco. That's that's where I live. That's where I'm based. That's where I've been working on tech for the last 20 years. And it makes sense as you scale out and and prototyping hub. You have a you have a warehouse, but you don't have a gigafactory yet. And that might be somewhere.

Correct. Got it.

Yeah. And that can and that can happen anywhere in the US, but we're designing in the US. We're building in the US. We're part of the re-industrialization movement of the US. So that's that's the plan. What have you learned about the reindustrialization efforts that are uh talked about a lot specific to the supply chain of uh autonomy components, electric vehicle components? I'm sure you're grappling with all of this, but uh what has surprised you to the upside? What has surprised you to the downside? Give me some white pills and black pills.

So, I started I started my career working in electrification, electric vehicles, and actually a lot of that technology was here in the bay. a lot of it developing battery packs, motors. Um,

and we watched over the last 20 years as that shifted out of not only just the bay but out of the US entirely, right?

Yeah.

And I and now you see the sort of the rush to get it back and I think I think there is it takes time but there are a lot of smart people that have been working in the space for a long time and there's a lot of excitement and capital pouring into this. Um, you know, our backers Eclipse are just the most phenomenal uh people you can be working with and they get this and they they understand it and you'll just see a lot more investments in this space in general um as we grow and yeah, I think the supply chain is coming back here. It's just it's it takes time like like everything. It's just going to come back in automated automated factories this time around.

Yeah. Uh we are at time but you need to read this deep dive in the New Yorker about these insurance scams that are happening in New Orleans around uh 18-wheelers where people are crashing. Have you read this? Are you familiar with this story?

I I'm a little bit familiar with the story.

They put together the money for the first round for uncle 18. That's not what happened there. Uh but uh I mean it is something that that that would be at least easier to fight back against in terms of fraud if there were cameras all the way around the vehicle. So a little bit of a knock-on effect to the positive. Uh well

designed it the way that we did. Thank you

and thank you so much.

I am just based on this conversation I'm extremely confident that this company will be wildly successful and uh I'm glad you're doing this.

Yeah. So

terrific.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Back on soon.

We'll talk to you soon. Well, we'll see you soon. Bye.

After missed it completely. There we go. There you go.

Uh after our next guest, we will be taking you into a story about Coachella.