autonomous-trucking
(5)
Mars Auto
Mars Auto is a South Korean AI company building self-driving Class 8 trucks for long-haul freight. Founded in 2017 by KAIST computer scientists Ilsu Park and Gyuri Im, it uses a vision-only, end-to-end AI driving agent - seven cameras and a single neural network, with no LiDAR and no HD maps - that can be retrofitted onto existing trucks. Mars Auto ran the first commercial long-haul autonomous freight in Korea in 2023 and began paid U.S. operations from a Texas base in 2024, aiming to deploy fully unmanned trucks by 2028.
Ilsu Park
Ilsu Park is the co-founder and CEO of Mars Auto, a Seoul-based startup building camera-based, map-free self-driving software for heavy trucks. A KAIST computer science graduate and self-taught deep-learning engineer, he started with a hobby project that used a driving-game simulator to train a neural network, then turned that idea into a company that runs paid autonomous freight in Korea and the United States. Mars Auto takes a Tesla-style vision-first approach, skipping LiDAR and HD maps to cut the cost of automating a Class 8 truck to roughly $7,000 per unit. Park has raised about $12 million, graduated from Y Combinator, and made the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list. He is targeting fully driverless long-haul freight by 2028.
Inceptio Technology
Inceptio Technology is a developer of full-stack autonomous driving systems for heavy-duty trucks, headquartered in Shanghai with an R&D center in Fremont/Santa Clara, California. Founded in 2018 by Julian Ma, it works with truck OEMs to mass-produce Level 3 highway-capable trucks and operates one of the largest real-world autonomous freight fleets in the world. Its proprietary XUANYUAN and T-NOA systems power more than 4,000 trucks that have logged over 400 million kilometers of commercial operation for customers including JD Logistics, Nestle, Budweiser and Deppon Express, as it charts a data-driven roadmap toward scalable Level 4 autonomy.
Jin Stedge
Jin Stedge is the co-founder and CEO of TrueNorth, a San Francisco freight-tech company building an AI loadboard and virtual dispatcher named Loadie that helps independent truckers find loads, price them, and get paid. Born in Korea and adopted at seven into an American family of owner-operators, she studied aerospace engineering at MIT, did neuroscience research, and worked in HR tech and autonomous driving before returning to her family's roots in trucking. She founded TrueNorth in 2019 with Sanjaya Wijeratne, raised a $50M Series B backed by Sam Altman and Lachy Groom, and earned a spot on Forbes 30 Under 30.
ISEE
ISEE is an MIT spinout building humanistic, AI-powered self-driving yard trucks that automate the repetitive, dangerous work of moving trailers inside logistics yards and port terminals. Its autonomy system is grounded in cognitive-science ideas like theory of mind, letting trucks reason about intent and handle the unpredictable chaos of a working yard. ISEE claims to be the first company to reach fully autonomous operations in the yard-truck space, with customers including Maersk and Lazer Spot.