Autonomous freight trucking company Einride rises sharply in first trade on Nasdaq

Autonomous EV freight trucking company Einride rose sharply in its first day of trading on the Nasdaq. The company went public on Wednesday morning under the ticker symbol "ENRD."

Einride shares were higher by as much as 90% during trading on Wednesday morning. Trading was temporarily halted by the Nasdaq mid-morning due to the the rapid move in shares, based on its "limit up-limit-down" protocol that is triggered by rapid moves in the price of shares.

Einride's pre-equity value had fallen to $1.35 billion upon final shareholder approval of its SPAC deal with Legato Merger Corp. III last week — lower than the $1.8 billion value set when the deal was first proposed last November.

The deal raised over $200 million in gross proceeds, with $113 million in PIPE capital from institutional investors, including Stockholm-based EQT Ventures.

Founded in 2016, Einride provides heavy-duty, cab-less autonomous EV trucks, and freight services for driver-operated electric trucks. Its technology can also be licensed to third parties, both operational planning AI software and its autonomous driving system.

"In the majority of freight trucking uses cases in the future, electric and autonomous is going to be the cheapest options," said Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli in a "Squawk Box" interview on Wednesday.

Einride has 200 EV freight trucks operating on its platform today, "and doing so with a cost benefit today," Charli said. "You need to be cost efficient, and our customer deployments are already profitable today," he added.

Einride was named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list three times, most recently in 2025.

Einride currently has over 30 enterprise customers across seven countries, with approximately $92 million in expected annual recurring revenue (ARR) from signed contracts and over $800 million in potential long-term ARR through joint business plans. It has regulatory permits in the United States and Europe. Its current fleet of approximately 200 electric vehicles is used by customers including GE Appliances and Swedish online pharmacy company Apotea.

PepsiCo is among the companies that has piloted use of Einride freight solutions, in markets including Germany, and in the U.S., Memphis, Tennessee. Heineken added EV freight routes between the Netherlands and Germany in 2024, and to Austria. Einride also has plans to deploy 300 electric trucks across Europe by 2030 with Mars.

"We spent the last five to six years really establishing the 30-plus customer contracts in operation in seven countries," he said. "We've proven out the product and tech with a large set of customers and now it is about pushing the throttle and scaling in these relationships, and in order to due that, we need to invest," he added.

Driverless freight trucking is expected to scale rapidly in U.S.

Autonomous freight trucking is expected to scale rapidly starting this year. Autonomous freight companies have converged on Texas as a primary deployment point, and it's not just because of the pro-business, light regulatory touch for which the state is known. The Sun Belt traffics in a massive amount of freight, with routes stretching from Texas to Arizona and California. Lack of severe weather conditions such as snow and ice also removes one variable for the autonomous technology to navigate. 

But there is also a lot of competition. Einride competes with autonomous trucking companies including Aurora Innovation, Kodiak AI, and fellow CNBC Disruptor 50 firm Waabi.

Aurora Innovation — which acquired Uber's autonomous tech group in 2020 — has run autonomous freight routes between Dallas and Houston, and it recently started a 1,000-mile route between Fort Worth and Phoenix, notable for being beyond what a human trucker could handle without a stop. Kodiak AI, which has operations linking Houston, Dallas and Oklahoma City, expects to have self-driving semis with no drivers on long-haul routes in the second half of this year. Aurora recently announced a deal with Volvo Autonomous Solutions to run a new 200-mile freight route between Dallas and Oklahoma City.

Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary McLane is planning to deploy self-driving trucking technology from Aurora Innovation on routes in Texas and across the U.S. Sun Belt by the end of the year

"Autonomous is happening in the U.S. and the competition is definitely coming out of the U.S.," Charli said. "The more competition on the OEM market, the better for us," he said, referring to the investments being made by truck manufacturers in autonomous technology. "The development that happens on the OEM side benefits us," he added.

Einride is deploying 75 manually operated electric heavy-duty trucks in Amazon's Relay freight network, an expansion of the freight EV startup's push into the U.S. ahead of a planned public offering, and Amazon's push to expand no-emissions electrification technology across its logistics network and beyond last-mile delivery.

The Einride trucks will support Amazon's middle-mile network as part of Amazon Relay, the company's Uber-like app for truck drivers that lets them book and haul Amazon loads, and which Amazon launched in 2017. Trucks operating in the middle mile move orders between Amazon's fulfillment centers, sort centers, air facilities, and last-mile delivery stations.

The Einride EVs are projected to drive up to three million electric transport miles annually with zero-tailpipe emissions. Einride will also support charging infrastructure across five locations. Einride's proprietary optimization software, Saga AI, is also being used to manage EV execution of select Amazon loads, including charging planning. 

The SPAC market boomed in 2025, its third-biggest year behind 2020 and 2021, measured in deal flow and proceeds, according to Renaissance Capital data, with retail trading in tech companies a major focus. But the performance has been mixed more recently for transportation technology, in particular, which has been a focus for SPAC mergers, including autonomous driving and electrification. Another trucking-focused SPAC deal between Plus.AI and Churchill Capital Corp IX that had been planned for this year was scrapped in April, with the companies citing "market conditions."

Winners in recent years include electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft company Joby Aviation and EV battery tech company Quantumscape, but their shares have been under pressure this year. There have also been a significant number of losers including EV trucking companies Nikola and Volta, and several EV companies focused on the consumer auto market: Vinfast, Faraday Future, Polestar, Lucid and Canoo.

Sign up for our weekly, original newsletter that goes beyond the annual Disruptor 50 list, offering a closer look at list-making companies and their innovative founders.