Phantom Car, a remote driving startup that introduced seven years back amid the buzz of autonomous car or truck technological innovation, is shutting down after failing to safe new funding, TechCrunch has acquired.
The enterprise, which experienced lifted a total of $95 million, developed a teleoperation platform that authorized a distant driver, from time to time found thousands of miles absent, to operate a auto if needed. The organization attracted a combine of backers, such as angel buyers and early-stage VCs this kind of as Bessemer Enterprise Companions and Maniv Mobility, private fairness business InfraBridge and strategic investors these kinds of as ArcBest and ConGlobal. The startup’s very last elevate was $twenty five million in 2023.
The startup experienced occur shut to securing yet another spherical of funding, but it fell as a result of unexpectedly, according to a resource who spoke on issue of anonymity. At its height, the startup utilized about 120 persons. Phantom Vehicle, which had reduce staff final yr, employed a tiny additional than one hundred folks as of this 7 days. It was primarily based in South San Francisco.
Phantom Auto’s demise is the most current in a lengthy line of startups that popped up as the autonomous automobile technologies industry received awareness and expenditure from traders. That excitement, which led to billion-greenback acquisitions and valuations in the sector, faded as optimistic timelines to deploy robotaxis and self-driving motor vehicles slipped. A wave of consolidation, shutdowns and pivots followed. The tricky fundraising atmosphere in the past eighteen months caused another wave of closures.
Phantom Automobile founder and CEO Shai Magzimof posted Tuesday on LinkedIn that the enterprise was ceasing functions.
“After 7 many years of efforts to reshape the upcoming of bodily labor at Phantom Car, we have manufactured the difficult selection to near operations. there are various variables contributing to this, like current market conditions and insufficient funding,” he wrote. “I express gratitude to our workforce, buyers, shoppers, associates, and all who’ve joined us on this journey. these moments are difficult, but my most important issue is our group. We possess outstanding talent now searching for alternatives in the career sector. I’m dedicated to offering references for our workforce. personally, I’ll be using a pause to unwind and consider about the upcoming methods.”
Resources informed TechCrunch that the business experienced traction on the buyer deployment side. Nevertheless, it was nonetheless reliant on exterior funding to preserve functions heading and eventually to scale.
Phantom Automobile was launched in 2017 and in the beginning targeted on making use of its teleops technologies to autonomous vehicles on general public roadways such as robotaxis and self-driving vehicles. The company’s executive team quickly recognized that even with its technology, significant-scale business deployments of driverless motor vehicles on general public roadways was decades away.
Phantom Auto pivoted in 2019 and began procuring its remote driving program to logistics, specially forklifts and property vehicles that have no autonomy as nicely as autonomous sidewalk shipping and delivery robots. All of these motor vehicles run at minimal velocity and, with the exception of shipping and delivery bots, are in confined environments. The enterprise had shopper agreements with Maersk, CJ Logistics, ArcBest and autonomous sidewalk bot startup Provide Robotics.
