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Einride Joins U.S.-Listed Autonomous Rivals on Nasdaq
Equity Valuation Set at $1.35 Billion
Key Takeaways:
- Einride began trading on Nasdaq via a merger valuing the Swedish autonomous trucking startup at about $1.35 billion on June 10 in New York.
- The lower valuation, down from earlier estimates up to $5 billion, reflects efforts to attract investors amid slow electric truck adoption and weak rival stock performances.
- The listing tests investor appetite for autonomous trucking as Einride competes with peers like Aurora and Kodiak while navigating high costs and infrastructure constraints.
Swedish driverless truck group Einride AB will make its trading debut in New York on June 10 with hopes of benefiting from the investor buzz generated by SpaceX’s initial public offering later in the week.
The high-profile listing of Elon Musk’s company will “absolutely put a spotlight on deep tech” and “the major technological shifts that are taking place,” Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli said in an interview.
The Stockholm-based startup, founded in 2016, will go public on the Nasdaq through a merger with blank-check firm Legato Merger Corp. III at a pre-money equity valuation of about $1.35 billion.
That’s down from the $1.8 billion level announced when the deal was unveiled in November and considerably lower than the roughly $5 billion valuation when discussions took place with banks about a potential IPO, the Financial Times reported.
The company agreed to a lower valuation to appeal to investors participating in the deal, according to Charli. Entities affiliated with Capital Group and EQT Ventures will remain Einride’s largest shareholders following the transaction, followed by Alyeska Investment Group.
“We chose to prioritize bringing in good investors at a valuation that we felt was appropriate,” the CEO said.
The debut will mark the latest test for a business built around electric trucking software and autonomous driving. The truck industry’s transition away from diesel has proved slower and more complicated than Einride initially anticipated, with high vehicle costs and charging infrastructure constraints among the headwinds.
Added to that, autonomous-trucking rivals Aurora Innovation Inc. and Kodiak AI Inc. saw weak post-listing performances in the U.S., underscoring the challenges these companies face in sustaining market valuations.
“We’re all going after roughly the same market to some extent,” Charli said. “But we’re approaching it from different angles.”
