Kodiak AI, Inc. (KDK)

Kodiak AI, Inc. (formerly Kodiak Robotics, Inc., which merged with Ares Acquisition Corporation II on September 24, 2025 and trades on Nasdaq as KDK) is a provider of physical AI with a focus on AI-powered autonomous vehicle technology for driverless trucking. Founded in 2018 by Don Burnette, the company developed the Kodiak Driver, a virtual driver that combines AI-powered software with modular, vehicle-agnostic hardware. As of December 31, 2025, Kodiak Driver-powered vehicles had logged over 10,700 cumulative hours of paid driverless operations, and the company had 342 employees.

The Kodiak Driver uses a Modular Cognitive Architecture of parallel neural nets that process camera, radar and LiDAR data, and it operates without high-definition maps. Its hardware includes mirror-mounted SensorPods, a redundant architecture for steering, braking, power and compute, GPU-based physical AI compute, and an Actuation Control Engine that executes safe fallback maneuvers. Supporting offerings include Kodiak OnTime, a suite of tools that integrates with customer fleet, transportation and yard systems, a 24/7 Operations Center, and Assisted Autonomy, which provides remote driver support in partnership with Vay and over Verizon networks. The main business model is Driver-as-a-Service, launched in December 2024, under which customers license the Kodiak Driver on customer-owned vehicles for a per-vehicle or per-mile fee, typically under anticipated three-to-four-year master service contracts. Long-haul customers are currently charged per-mile or per-load fees for freight hauled on Kodiak-owned trucks, with a planned shift to DaaS once long-haul driverless operations begin.

Kodiak serves the long-haul trucking, industrial trucking and defense markets. In industrial trucking, Atlas Energy Solutions operates customer-owned driverless trucks in the Permian Basin and committed in March 2025 to deploy the Kodiak Driver on 100 Atlas-owned trucks. Long-haul customers include J.B. Hunt, Werner Enterprises, C.R. England and Martin Brower, and more than 12,600 revenue-generating loads had been delivered by December 31, 2025 across an autonomous freight network of about 24,000 miles in the southern United States, with service from Dallas to Houston, Oklahoma City, Atlanta and El Paso. In defense, the company has recognized about $30 million in revenue from U.S. military contracts and was awarded a U.S. Marine Corps contract in early 2026 to integrate the Kodiak Driver into the ROGUE-Fires vehicle. It plans to complete its long-haul safety case and begin long-haul driverless operations, initially in Texas, by the end of 2026.

Kodiak partners with upfitters such as Roush Industries to integrate its hardware into commercially available trucks and has a strategic agreement with Bosch to scale manufacturing of a production-grade redundant autonomous platform. NXP Semiconductors supplies automotive processors and networking interfaces, and Applied Intuition provides simulation technology. Models are trained on GPU clusters in its own data center or the cloud, using only proprietary data. Maintenance, hardware financing and insurance are expected to be delivered with third-party partners. Kodiak's main competitors are other AV developers focused on long-haul trucking, industrial trucking and defense. The text does not state the location of its headquarters.