Humble Emerges from Stealth with $24M and a Cabless Autonomous Electric Truck
April 21, 2026 - 2:25 pm
San Francisco-based autonomous freight startup Humble, founded by an ex-Uber ATG and Waabi engineer, is taking a unique approach to autonomous trucking. Instead of a traditional driver's cab or hub handoffs, Humble has developed a fully electric, cabless vehicle called the Humble Hauler.
The startup secured a $24 million seed round led by Eclipse, a Palo Alto-based venture firm focused on physical AI investments, with participation from Energy Impact Partners.
A Vision for Autonomous Freight
Co-founder Eyal Cohen, with a two-decade career in autonomous vehicles at companies like Apple, Uber ATG, Waabi, and Spark AI (acquired by John Deere), believes conventional trucks were never designed with autonomy in mind. He argues that the current truck design reflects a human-centric approach, limiting the potential for efficient, autonomous operations.
The Humble Hauler's Key Features:
- No Driver's Cab: Removing the cab provides 360-degree sensor coverage, improving safety and enabling unique vehicle geometry.
- Dock-to-Dock Operation: The Hauler delivers directly to destinations, unloading at the same location, eliminating the need for intermediate handoff points.
- Autonomy Stack: Humble utilizes vision-language-action models, a departure from rule-based systems used by competitors like Aurora and Kodiak.
Differentiating from the Competition
While Aurora and Kodiak operate hub-to-hub or fixed launch-and-landing models, Humble's direct dock-to-dock approach aims to offer logistics operators higher efficiency. Jiten Behl, a partner at Eclipse, emphasizes the potential for significant operational improvements: "When you present a possibility of 30 to 50% more efficiency, logistics operators are compelled to consider it."
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