TL;DR
Swedish driverless trucking company Einride listed on Nasdaq via SPAC at $1.35bn, down 73% from the $5bn once discussed with banks. Autonomous trucking rivals Aurora and Kodiak have struggled after listing. Revenue not disclosed.
Einride, the Swedish electric and autonomous trucking startup, began trading on the Nasdaq on Wednesday through a merger with blank-check firm Legato Merger Corp III. The deal values the company at approximately $1.35 billion pre-money, down from the $1.8 billion announced in November and well below the roughly $5 billion discussed in earlier IPO talks with banks, according to the Financial Times.
CEO Roozbeh Charli said the company accepted the lower valuation to attract better investors. “We chose to prioritise bringing in good investors at a valuation that we felt was appropriate,” he said.
The SpaceX tailwind bet
Charli is banking on SpaceX's IPO later this week to generate broader interest in deep tech listings. “It will absolutely put a spotlight on deep tech and the major technological shifts that are taking place,” he said.
Whether the SpaceX halo effect extends to a $1.35 billion SPAC listing for an autonomous trucking company is an open question. The two businesses have little in common beyond the “deep tech” label.
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The autonomous trucking track record
Einride's US-listed autonomous trucking rivals have not fared well. Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI both saw weak post-listing share performance, underscoring the difficulty of sustaining public-market valuations in a sector where commercialisation timelines keep slipping.
“We're all going after roughly the same market to some extent,” Charli said. “But we're approaching it from different angles.”
What Einride does differently
Einride builds electric trucking software and autonomous driving systems rather than retrofitting existing diesel trucks. The company was founded in Stockholm in 2016 and designs cab-less electric freight vehicles for logistics and warehouse operations.
Capital Group and EQT Ventures remain the largest shareholders after the transaction, followed by Alyeska Investment Group.
The flags
The valuation dropped from $5 billion (bank discussions) to $1.8 billion (November announcement) to $1.35 billion (final deal). That trajectory suggests the market priced autonomous trucking lower at every stage of the process. Charli frames it as a deliberate choice to attract quality investors, but valuation compression of 73% from the original discussions is significant regardless of the reason.
The truck industry's transition from diesel has proved slower and more complicated than Einride initially anticipated, with high vehicle costs and charging infrastructure constraints among the headwinds. Revenue, profitability, and unit deployment figures have not been disclosed in the Bloomberg reporting. A SPAC listing rather than a traditional IPO also means Einride did not face the same scrutiny from underwriters that a conventional offering requires.