Pittsburgh autonomous trucking company Locomation is reportedly shutting down

Just two weeks ago, Locomation was inviting stakeholders and members of the press to take rides inside its autonomous trucks. Now, according to the Pittsburgh Business Times’ reporting, the 2018-founded, Lawrenceville-based company will be closing its doors at the end of this month, as it lacks the funds to continue operating.

Technical.ly has reached out to the company and will update this story when we hear back.

“Obviously, we’re super disappointed; we do feel like we had all the right pieces in place,” Locomotion VP of Policy and Strategy Finch Fulton told the Times. “We had really smart people and a very strategic approach. … We have customers in the product market that we just, for a number of macroeconomic reasons, were unable to raise money to continue operations and to progress further to be able to get the product ready for commercial operation.”

The five-year-old, venture-backed company was born of Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center. Instead of trucks operating with full autonomy, Locomation’s signature tech instead had an autonomous truck following behind a human-operated one in a convoy. Though its technology wasn’t yet launched on public roadways, its customers have included the likes of Springfield, Missouri-based transportation provider Christenson Transportation.

Just months ago, Locomation was a finalist in the Pittsburgh Technology Council’s Tech 50 Awards for 2022, and its chief product and safety officer, Steve Kenner, was named a nominee in the Technical.ly Awards’ CTO of the Year category. Prior to that, the company’s environmental report released in 2021 was seen as a sign of promise for the autonomous trucking industry.

Now, its ending marks Pittsburgh’s third high-profile tech company shutdown in the past four months. Argo AI announced its closure this past October, and Fifth Season followed suit later that same month. Both cited financial difficulties. In the case of Locomation, most of its 80-person staff will be let go, though about a dozen workers will oversee the company’s final chapter, according to the Times report.

This is a developing story.

Atiya Irvin-Mitchell is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Heinz Endowments.