Mountain View's Kodiak says it is 99% ready to run driverless big rigs on a Texas highway
The self-driving truck company plans to haul IKEA freight between Dallas and Houston with no one in the cab by the end of 2026.
Kodiak AI, a Mountain View company that makes self-driving technology for big trucks, said Oct. 30 it is 99% of the way to proving its trucks can safely drive long highway routes with no one in the cab.
The number comes from what Kodiak calls its Autonomy Readiness Measure. It tracks how much of the company's safety case is complete. A safety case is a written argument, backed by test results, that a system is safe for a specific job. The measure is Kodiak's own, not a government approval. It stood at 84% in February.
Kodiak said that once the safety case is done, it will start driverless service on Interstate 45 between Dallas and Houston. Its first customer there is IKEA, on a 219-mile route. The company said it is ahead of pace to launch by the end of 2026.
The launch would make Kodiak the second company running driverless big rigs on that highway. Rival Aurora began driverless deliveries between Dallas and Houston in May 2025. Aurora has said self-driving trucks can help an industry facing an aging pool of drivers, high turnover and rising costs.
Kodiak said it tested rare, risky situations in computer simulations that would take years to meet on real roads. It already had 35 driverless trucks hauling in the oil fields of West Texas as of the end of June. "This is the home stretch," said Don Burnette, Kodiak's founder and CEO.
Source: Kodiak AI, "Kodiak's Autonomy Readiness Measure Reaches 99%," Oct. 30, 2026; Aurora, "Aurora Begins Commercial Driverless Trucking in Texas," May 1, 2025.