Humble emerges with $24M seed for cabless autonomous electric freight truck

Autonomous trucking startup Humble emerged from stealth with a $24 million seed round and unveiled a fully electric, cabless freight vehicle called the Humble Hauler. The San Francisco-based company's vehicle is designed for standard 40-foot and 53-foot shipping containers and operates dock-to-dock, unloading cargo at destinations rather than dropping trailers. Humble's cabless design provides 360-degree sensor coverage using cameras, LiDAR and radar while increasing payload capacity. Eclipse led the seed round with participation from Energy Impact Partners. Humble CEO Eyal Cohen, who helped build autonomous freight company Otto and sold SparkAI to John Deere in 2023, said removing the cab allows the company to "rethink the whole vehicle for an autonomous future." The company's autonomy system uses vision-language-action models rather than traditional rule-based approaches. Humble built its first prototype in approximately six months with a team drawn from Tesla, Waymo, Cruise, Apple and Uber. Jiten Behl, an Eclipse partner and Humble board member who previously served as Rivian's Chief Strategy Officer, said the pitch to logistics operators focuses on potential 30-50% efficiency gains. "When you go to them and say there is a possibility of 30 to 50% more efficiency in your business, you're obligated to take it to your management team," Behl told Fortune. The U.S. truck freight market represents a $906 billion industry, with the autonomous freight segment projected to reach $3.25 billion by 2035. Humble has been engaging with federal regulators including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as autonomous trucking legislation moves through Congress.