Top Automotive Startups in 2024

KeepTruckin is a San Francisco-based company that serves more than one million drivers and over 100,000 businesses that power the physical economy by equipping them with the technology needed to improve the safety and efficiency of their operations. Shoaib Makani and his co-founders Ryan Johns and Obaid Khan founded the company in 2013 to serve the trucking industry, a workforce that is essential to the economy but underserved by technology. Today, KeepTruckin’s 400,000-strong network of connected vehicles, ranging from small trucking companies to Fortune 500 enterprises, is one of the largest in North America. The products that KeepTruckin builds deliver integrated value for a diverse range of industries, from construction and oil and gas to distribution and moving and storage. At every turn, KeepTruckin provides cutting-edge hardware and software that leverages the latest advancements in AI and computer vision to solve a broad range of problems for businesses with vehicles — spanning video-based driver safety, Electronic Logging Device (ELD) compliance, GPS tracking, dispatch, and fuel and maintenance. KeepTruckin’s series E round valued the company at $2.3 billion, and it currently employs more than 2,400 people worldwide.

Aurora works at the intersection of rigorous engineering and applied machine learning to address one of the most challenging, important and interesting opportunities of our generation: transforming the way people and goods move. Founded by three of the world’s leaders in the self-driving vehicle industry, we design the software and hardware that will power the next revolution in transportation. We bring partners together to move more quickly than any one company can move alone.

Kodiak was founded in 2018 to redefine long-haul trucking using safe and reliable autonomous technology. Between growing e-commerce and a strong economy, demand for trucking is on the rise. The trucking industry faces major problems: a shortage of drivers, difficult working conditions, and extremely high turnover. According to the American Trucking Association, the industry faced a shortage of 51,000 commercial truck drivers at the end of 2017. Long-haul trucking is primed for autonomous technology. Highway driving is more structured and predictable than urban driving. This means there are fewer decisions for drivers to make and a better fit for autonomous vehicles. We believe that autonomous trucks will play a major role in filling the gap while improving safety, enhancing truck driver quality of life, increasing efficiency, reducing congestion and emissions and creating jobs across the economy.

Caribou is a fast-growing, mission-driven fintech that delivers financial security and peace of mind to consumers by providing better auto refinancing, insurance and financial protection products. Through our partnerships with top local and community lenders, we bring customers great rates and lower monthly payments. Our secure, digital platform makes it easy for our customers to see exactly how much they can save and complete the refinance process quickly, all from the comfort of their home. What's more, we do all the heavy lifting, including paying off the old lender as well as re-titling the vehicle, saving our customers those dreaded trips to the DMV.

Zum, the leader in modern, sustainable, and tech-enabled student transportation, also now offers Zum Charter, transportation service that allows teachers, coaches, parents, event planners and others to book vehicles for school-related athletic and field trips, summer camps, sports trips, community and company events and tours, as well as other forms of short- and long-distance travel. Zūm provides one seamless, real-time interface for parents, drivers, schools, districts, administrators, and operators, to transport children safely and with increased visibility and personalized care. The company is headquartered in Redwood City, California. For more information, visit ridezum.com.

Turo is a car sharing marketplace where guests can book any car they want, wherever they want it, from a vibrant community of local hosts across the US, Canada, the UK, France & Australia. Guests choose from a totally unique selection of nearby cars, while hosts earn extra money to offset the costs of car ownership. A pioneer of the sharing economy and the travel industry, Turo is a safe, supportive community where the car you book is part of a story, not a fleet.

We're the driverless car company. We believe in improving people’s lives by making transportation safer, more accessible, and more convenient. Our team is small and we move quickly. We’re currently testing a fully driverless solution on city streets. We're looking for smart, ambitious people to help build the world’s largest fleet of driverless cars. Check out our YouTube channel for our latest video releases!

SpotHero is an on-demand app for parking that allows drivers to reserve their perfect spot right from the web and their phones. We partner with garages, lots and valets to get drivers discounted parking spots all across the US. We make life easier for the daily driver.

Through the development of a first of its kind open platform, Platform Science provides the hardware and software that allows clients to fully capture, analyze and apply a wealth of data, dramatically increasing performance, compliance, time management and savings.

We provide innovative artificial intelligence systems which utilize end-to-end deep-learning that enables driving across diverse urban environments. This unique approach to software development and implementation allows our systems to learn and adapt to never-before-seen urban environments seamlessly and safely without making compromises in safety or ease of utilization to allow the efficient movement of people, goods and more. This isn't just a single-city trial, our aggressive implementation will place us as the first company to launch our software in over 100 different urban environments.