Morgan Stanley Sees $17 Billion Tesla Semi Software Opportunity by 2040

Kodiak AI plans to make IKEA Supply its first customer for driverless long-haul freight service by the end of this year. The planned launch would remove the safety observer from the cab on a 219-mile leg, primarily along Interstate 45 between Kodiak's Houston and Dallas-area facilities, a key segment of an existing 292-mile route from IKEA's Baytown distribution center to its Frisco store. The announcement builds on four years of supervised autonomous deliveries for IKEA, during which Kodiak says it has carried more than 1,300 loads and logged over 750K miles with a safety observer aboard. Kodiak began its long-haul launch program in August and said its trucks now complete runs between Lancaster, Texas, and Houston without the observer intervening, though the company must finish its highway safety case before removing the observer. Kodiak AI was founded in 2018 and developed the Kodiak Driver, an autonomous-driving system for trucks and other vehicles; the Mountain View, California-based company went public on September 25, 2025, when its shares began trading on Nasdaq following a SPAC transaction with Ares Acquisition Corporation II. Shares of Kodiak AI were up 1.8% in premarket trading after peeling off 13.0% on Thursday.

Daimler Truck is betting on owning the entire autonomous trucking system, with its Torc Robotics subsidiary aiming to run trucks on public roads with no safety driver in the cab before the end of the year. CEO Karin Rådström said at Daimler Truck's Media Night, ahead of IAA Transportation 2026, that the setup differentiates the company from any other player in the industry, spanning the truck platform and vehicle architecture, hardware integration and autonomous driving software. Daimler Truck North America builds the autonomous-ready chassis with redundancy in steering and braking, while Torc develops the AI-driven system covering perception, planning and driving. First commercial freight operations are planned for 2027, with scaling to begin in 2028, starting on long-haul lanes in North America, where Rådström said trucks travel more than twice the daily distance of European trucks and driver shortages are even more difficult. Torc previously completed driver-out validation in November 2024 on a multi-lane closed course in Texas at speeds up to 65 mph. With Freightliner, Rådström said the company is the clear number one in North American heavy-duty trucks; its Freightliner and Western Star brands held 37.8% of the North American Class 8 market through June, according to Daimler Truck's second-quarter investor presentation, and more than 1 million Cascadias have been sold in the U.S. since the model's 2007 introduction.