Overland AI closes $32M Series A round
Byron Boots and Stephanie Bonk started the company in 2022 to design technology that helps ground vehicles operate in complex environments and for one person to control fleets of them.
Overland AI, a three-year-old startup that develops software for uncrewed ground vehicles, has captured $32 million in Series A capital to support the next phase of its growth strategy.
In conjunction with that, Overland AI also has unveiled its OverWatch software that the company designs to help one person control fleets of UGVs that are powered by the company’s OverDrive autonomy stack.
8VC led the Series A round announced Monday. Other participants included Point72 Ventures, Overmatch Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Ascend, Osage University Partners and Caprock.
“Tactical operators require various autonomous capabilities for advanced mission planning,” said Byron Boots, Overland AI co-founder and chief executive. “We build ground autonomy that enables one operator to coordinate multiple robotic vehicles with integrated payloads, all in off-road terrain and GPS-denied environments.”
Boots, a University of Washington professor in machine learning, and fellow co-founder and Overland President Stephanie Bonk started the company in 2022 to help enterprise organizations use ground vehicles in complex environments.
At that time, Boots was the principal investigator for the UW RACER team that was involved in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency competition.
Overland AI’s autonomous offerings are in development under the Marine Corps’ NMESIS missile launcher program, along with the Army’s Robotic Combat Vehicle program and Sandhills Project with the XVIII Airborne Corps.
The OverDrive autonomy stack also has been integrated in vehicles such as the Polaris RZR, Textron Ripsaw M5 and General Dynamics S-MET Small Multipurpose Equipment Transport.
“Series A will meaningfully accelerate the adoption of our ground autonomy capability,” Bonk added in the release. “We are investing in making our products simpler to use, quicker to field, and easier to integrate into broader national security operations.”