SA国际传媒

, a maker of driverless trucks, announced yesterday it is shuttering its doors.

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The San Francisco-based startup had raised just over $20 million since it was founded in 2015. Its last fundraise, a $16.5 million led by , took place in March 2018. Previous investors include , , and 9Point Ventures.

At the time of its Series A, Starsky announced that it had successfully driven its self-driving cargo truck for seven miles without a driver, according to .

鈥淣o safety driver behind the wheel, no engineer hiding on the bunk. We are the first company to make driverless trucks a reality,鈥� Starsky Robotics鈥� co-founder CEO said in a blog post then.

Fast-forward just over two years, and Seltz-Axmacher published a with a far more somber tone titled simply, 鈥淭he End of Starsky Robotics.鈥� He wrote:

鈥淚n 2015, I got obsessed with the idea of driverless trucks and started Starsky Robotics. In 2016, we became the first street-legal vehicle to be paid to do real work without a person behind the wheel. In 2018, we became the first street-legal truck to do a fully unmanned run, albeit on a closed road. In 2019, our truck became the first fully-unmanned truck to drive on a live highway.

And in 2020, we鈥檙e shutting down.鈥�

It鈥檚 unclear exactly how many employees will be affected by the shutdown, but a photo from February 2019 posted on Seltz-Axmacher鈥檚 blog shows 鈥渕uch of Starsky鈥檚 office team,鈥� with just under three dozen employees.

In a March 19聽, Seltz-Axmacher details how things fell apart at the company. By Nov. 12, 2019, Starsky鈥檚 $20 million Series B had fallen through, and most of the team was furloughed just three days later in what he described as 鈥減robably the worst day of my life.鈥� The founders then started working on selling the company, and 鈥渕aking sure the team didn鈥檛 go without shelter.鈥�

What happened?

With so many autonomous vehicle funding companies raising millions of dollars as of late, one has to wonder what happened in the case of Starsky Robotics.

Seltz-Axmacher blames timing in part for his company鈥檚 demise.

In his blog post, he said the space was too overwhelmed 鈥渨ith the unmet promise of AI to focus on a practical solution.鈥�

He continued:

鈥淎s those breakthroughs failed to appear, the downpour of investor interest became a drizzle. It also didn鈥檛 help that last year鈥檚 tech IPOs took a lot of energy out of the tech industry, and that trucking has been in a recession for 18 or so months.鈥�

Seltz-Axmacher also noted that investors didn鈥檛 seem to care for the company鈥檚 model of being the operator. He also claimed that Starsky鈥檚 鈥渉eavy investment into safety didn鈥檛 translate for investors.鈥�

Currently in the process of selling the assets of the company, Seltz-Axmacher said those assets include a number of patents essential to operating unmanned vehicles.

Meanwhile, 鈥檚 raised a staggering $2.25 billion earlier this month. That deal came just 10 months after rival self-driving car outfit at an approximate $18 billion post-money valuation. In February 2019, self-driving car startup raised $530 million in a led by .

Starsky鈥檚 competitors include (which raised last September) and Canada鈥檚 .

According to VentureBeat, in September 2017 Starsky Robotics completed the longest end-to-end autonomous trip on record. 鈥淎fter Hurricane Irma hit southwestern Florida, the company used one of its trucks to aid recovery efforts, hauling water 68 miles from one end of the state to the other without human intervention.鈥�

I鈥檓 no self-driving expert but that sounds pretty cool.

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