Robotruck, which is developing a fully autonomous driving system for trucks, announced on 31 July that it had completed the first close of its Series A funding round, securing about ¥5.2bn ($32m) in equity.
The Tokyo-based company was founded in 2024.
A solid result from May’s demonstration run
When the author covered the fundraising by T2, another developer of autonomous-driving technology for trucks, on 22 July, the author noted that Japan’s logistics sector is under strain from a shrinking working-age population and the newly imposed cap on drivers’ overtime. Robotruck is driven by the same concerns. On its website, the company frames the problem in similar terms—rising transport demand fuelled by e-commerce set against an ageing driver workforce and severe labour shortages—and pledges to confront the challenge through technology.
On the technical side, the company says only that it uses “cutting-edge AI” and a “robust, redundant system”, and offers little further detail. Even so, judging by the equipment mounted on the vehicle in the photograph below, it appears to read its surroundings—and feed its autonomous driving—using sensors such as LiDAR, cameras and the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS).
A thin technical account does not, however, mean the venture’s feasibility is in doubt. The photograph of the vehicle was taken during a demonstration run held on the Shin-Tomei Expressway in May. Robotruck is aiming for Level 4 (full autonomy under specified conditions, such as on expressways or within limited areas). For this run a safety driver rode along, ready to take over if needed, but the vehicle covered the entire roughly 260km (160-mile) stretch of expressway from the Kanto region to the Chubu region without a single intervention, and the company reports that the drive was stable. The results were announced on the same day as the first close of the Series A.
Funds earmarked for technology development
The first close of the Series A was led by JIC Venture Growth Investments, a venture-capital arm of the Japan Investment Corporation, with several other investors also taking part.
The proceeds will be used for three purposes:
- adding to its fleet of demonstration vehicles and building redundancy into the autonomous driving system;
- expanding its operational design domain (ODD) and verification scenarios, and working towards safety assessment and certification; and
- developing physical-AI technology drawing on end-to-end (E2E) AI and world models, and investing in computing resources, simulation and a driving-data platform.
Yusuke Haga, Robotruck’s CEO, commented:
“Since our previous round a year ago (editor’s note: the pre-Series A of September 2025, which secured ¥1.65bn, or $11m at the exchange rate of the time), the landscape around autonomous trucks has moved on considerably. The government has set a target of deploying 1,000 self-driving trucks in fiscal 2030, and autonomous driving is positioned as one of the priority technologies in the “Japan Growth Strategy”. “Amid these demands of the times, the backing of some of Japan’s foremost investors makes me feel, in equal measure, both the expectation and the responsibility of becoming ‘a homegrown autonomous-driving start-up that develops domestic full self-driving technology and solves Japan’s social challenges’.”
