Bot Auto is a Houston-based autonomous trucking company founded in August 2023 by Dr. Xiaodi Hou. The company builds Level 4 autonomous trucks and commercialises them through a Transportation-as-a-Service (TaaS) model, meaning it owns and operates its own fleet rather than licensing technology to carriers. It emerged from stealth with a $20 million Pre-A round and a team of 76 engineers and industry veterans.
The company's autonomous trucks use a combination of LiDAR, radar, and cameras, with AI-driven real-time data processing and multiple redundancy layers to achieve Level 4 operation. Bot Auto claims to have completed Texas's first humanless hub-to-hub validation run in real traffic, and plans to launch driver-out commercial operations along the Houston–San Antonio corridor in 2025.
Bot Auto's focus is on the U.S. long-haul trucking market, a sector that moves roughly 72% of American freight and faces a reported driver shortage exceeding 80,000. By operating its own fleet end-to-end, the company takes direct responsibility for both the technology and the commercial service built on top of it.