Before the COVID pandemic put pressure on an already squeezed transportation and logistics industry, Phantom Auto\u2019s remote driving systems were viewed as an interesting, not essential, piece of technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt went from a cool to have, to have-to-have,\u201d co-founder Elliot Katz told TechCrunch, adding that companies were particularly keen to apply the remote driving technology to forklifts. Since 2020, forklifts have been the \u201chottest\u201d application of its system, Katz added.<\/p>\n

Demand for the technology is not only scaling in forklifts, Katz contends, it has spread to other logistics and transportation-related fields, including yard trucks. Now Phantom Auto is fueled and ready to tap into that demand with a fresh injection of $25 million from private equity firm InfraBridge, as well as a deepening customer relationship with ConGlobal, a major rail terminal operator with a fleet of 700 yard trucks.<\/p>\n

The startup has a pre-funding valuation of $500 million, according to sources familiar. Phantom Auto has raised $95 million to date.<\/p>\n

Phantom Auto, which was founded in 2017 and employs 120 people today, developed a teleoperation platform that allows a remote driver, sometimes located thousands of miles away, to take control of an autonomous vehicle if needed. The platform, which uses public cellular networks, isn\u2019t designed to take over in a split second in hopes of avoiding an accident. Instead, it\u2019s used as a safety backup to take control of the vehicle if it encounters a difficult scenario and gets confused, or is even involved in an accident.<\/p>\n

Initially, the company was focused on applying the technology to autonomous vehicles on public roadways such as robotaxis and self-driving trucks. But the company\u2019s executive team quickly realized that even with its technology, large-scale commercial deployments of driverless vehicles on public roads was decades away, Katz said.<\/p>\n