Humble, a San Francisco-based startup, emerged from stealth today with a $24 million seed round and a fully electric autonomous freight vehicle called the Humble Hauler, Fortune learned exclusively. Eclipse led the round, with Energy Impact Partners also participating.

The Hauler has no cab (essentially a self-driving platform) and is designed for 40-foot and 53-foot shipping containers and runs dock-to-dock—unloading at the destination rather than dropping a trailer and leaving. This isn’t always the case: Fellow AV trucking company Aurora operates a hub-to-hub model that hands off to local human drivers at drop yards near city limits, while Kodiak’s commercial operations rely on fixed launch-and-landing zones with no autonomous last-mile delivery. 

“Trucks were never designed to be autonomous,” Eyal Cohen, Humble’s CEO and founder, told Fortune. “Removing the cab allows us to rethink the whole vehicle for an autonomous future.”

Eliminating the cab opens up 360-degree sensor coverage across cameras, LiDAR, and radar, and frees payload capacity. The autonomy stack runs on vision-language-action models—a newer paradigm than rule-based systems.

Humble built its first prototype in roughly six months. Cohen’s background lends credibility to that timeline: He helped build Otto, the company that completed the first autonomous freight delivery by semi-truck in 2016, sold SparkAI to John Deere in 2023, and ran hardware at Waabi. His team spans Tesla, Waymo, Cruise, Apple, and Uber.

Jiten Behl, partner at Eclipse and a Humble board member, joined the firm in January 2024. He previously served as Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Growth Officer at Rivian, where he helped close Amazon’s order for 100,000 electric delivery vans—the largest EV delivery vehicle purchase on record—and led more than $10 billion in financing, including Rivian’s IPO. 

He frames Humble’s pitch to logistics operators simply. “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 market they are chasing is hard to ignore. U.S. truck freight is a $906 billion industry. The autonomous freight segment sits at an estimated $575.7 million in 2026 and is projected to reach $3.25 billion by 2035. Federal tailwinds are arriving in parallel. The Self Drive Act of 2026 was formally introduced in February, proposing a unified federal framework for autonomous trucking. Cohen was in Washington last week meeting with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Behl puts the capital requirements of scaling and developing the product, and deploying a pilot program for the Hauler, in perspective: “This is not going to take a billion dollars. It’s going to take an order of magnitude less than that.” 

See you tomorrow,

Lily Mae Lazarus
X: @LilyMaeLazarus
Email: lily.lazarus@fortune.com
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VENTURE CAPITAL

- Slash Financial, a San Francisco-based banking platform, raised $100 million in Series C funding. Ribbit Capital, Khosla Ventures, and Goodwater Capital led the round and were joined by New Enterprise Associates and Y Combinator.

- Rivan, a London, U.K.-based developer of synthetic fuel, raised $34 million in funding. IQ Capital led the round and was joined by Plural and others.

PRIVATE EQUITY

- Sumeru Equity Partners led a $175 million growth investment in K1x, a Morristown, N.J.-based developer of AI-powered tax automation software. Current investor Edison Partners also participated. 

- Collective Waste Solutions, backed by Concentric Equity Partners, acquired Straight Flush Rentals, a Calgary, Canada-based provider of fencing, toilets, and other rental equipment. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Marlin Equity Partners acquired WorkStep, a San Francisco-based AI-powered employee engagement platform designed for the frontline workforce. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- OneItalia Alliance, backed by J.C. Flowers, acquired Strategica Group, a Milan, Italy-based consortium of risk management consulting and insurance brokerage firms. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

- Steele Solutions, backed by Revelar Capital, acquired Maysteel Industries, an Allenton, Wis.-based fabrication company for data centers, critical infrastructure, and industrial markets. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Stentech, a portfolio company of Align Capital Partners, acquired Pentagon EMS, a Hillsboro, Ore.-based designer and manufacturer of tooling and fixture solutions for the Printed Circuit Board assembly process. Financial terms were not disclosed.

EXITS

- RedBird Capital Partners agreed to acquire Affinia, a Colchester, U.K.-based accounting services platform, from Sovereign Capital Partners. Financial terms were not disclosed.

FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS

- Passion Capital, a London, U.K.-based venture capital firm, raised $55 million for its fourth fund focused on AI, fintech, and enterprise risk companies across the U.K. and Europe.

PEOPLE

- ICG, a London, U.K.-based private equity firm, hired Mathieu Paillat as Head of France for the firm’s European Corporate strategy. Previously, he was with PAI Partners.