ITOCHU : Announces an Investment in US logistics service provider Gatik, which develops autonomous driving trucks.
June 10, 2024 at 09:11 pm
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ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Keita Ishii, President & COO; hereinafter "ITOCHU") announced today that ITOCHU has invested in Gatik AI, Inc. (headquartered in California; Gautam Narang, CEO; hereinafter "Gatik"), a company developing autonomous driving technology for commercial trucks and providing logistics services utilizing its self-driving vehicles in the U.S and Canada.
Logistics problems have become a social issue in the U.S. as a result of a rapid increase in freight volume due to the expansion of e-commerce, increased driver costs, and an increasing shortage of drivers. The growing demand for autonomous driving under these circumstances has led to the advancement of autonomous driving technology and the autonomous driving businesses is rapidly progressing ahead of the rest of the world in the U.S.
In addition to the development of autonomous driving software, Gatik has expertise in the overall design, development, testing and evaluation of autonomous vehicles. They have successfully been operating L4 commercial deliveries* on public roads (including highways and regular roads) since 2021. Gatik is the first and only player in North America to provide logistics services using autonomous driving vehicles in the so-called "middle mile logistics segment", between shipper's warehouses and between warehouses and retail locations. Gatik is working to resolve the issues whole logistic industry faces by building various required functions within the entire autonomous driving value chain, and at the same time further developing the autonomous driving business utilizing commercial vehicles.
ITOCHU has put forth a new management policy, "The Brand-New Deal: Profit opportunities are shifting downstream," and is accelerating growth investments starting from a downstream, and further expanding business areas. ITOCHU has long been engaged in the vehicle and parts logistics, finance, and retail businesses in the automobile industry in the U.S. and has been working to strengthen its functions in the downstream area. Through this capital alliance, both companies will work to expand the value chain in the downstream area, including establishing synergies in the existing wholesale and sales financing businesses for commercial vehicles in the U.S. We will continue to pursue opportunities of logistic services using self-driving vehicles in other areas outside of the U.S. and strive for the development of sustainable logistic. sustainable logistics.
*L4 commercial deliveries: refers to commercialized operations provided to customers that utilize level 4 autonomous driving. Level 4 is considered to be fully autonomous driving and the car can handle the majority of driving situations independently.
About Gatik AI, Inc.
Company name
Gatik AI, Inc.
Representative
Gautam Narang
Headquarters
161 E Evelyn Ave, Mountain View, CA 94041 United States of America
Established
2017
URL
https://gatik.ai/
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Itochu Corporation is a diversified group organized around 8 areas of activity:
- distribution of food products (34.9% of net sales): frozen food, vegetable oil, sweeteners, sugars, etc.;
- distribution of hydrocarbons (23.3%): hydrocarbons (natural gas, oil products, bioethanol, etc.). The group also develops manufacturing of chemical products activity;
- manufacturing and sale of industrial and construction machines, vehicles and ships (9.7%);
- production of metals and coal (8.5%);
- sale of consumer products (8.4%). The group also develops forest products sale and real estate development activities;
- distribution of computing and telecommunication equipments (7%): data transmission, Internet access, media content broadcasting and mobile telephony equipments. The group also offers financial services;
- sale of textile products (3.6%);
- other (4.6%).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: Japan (79.5%), Singapore (5.4%), the United States (4.5%), Australia (3.1%), China (2.8%) and other (4.7%).
ITOCHU CORPORATION 
