Einride said Wednesday it plans to go public through a merger with a special-purpose buyout firm, just six weeks after the Swedish electric and autonomous truck startup raised $100 million from investors. The SPAC’s merger with Legato Merger Corp. values Einride at $1.8 billion in equity, according to the companies.
The deal is expected to generate approximately $219 million in gross proceeds, a figure that does not take into account any buyback of the state-owned Legato shares. The company is also seeking up to $100 million in private investment in public equity (PIPE).
The merger is expected to close in the first half of 2026, with Einride debuting on the New York Stock Exchange.
Einride was founded in 2016 with an ambition to transform the freight industry, first with electric trucks and then with autonomous electric autonomous containers — vehicles without steering wheels or pedals designed to drive themselves. The company, which hired Roozbeh Charli as its new CEO earlier this year, is trying to scale three business lines: electric big rigs, autonomous pod-type trucks that navigate fixed routes and planning software designed for loaders.
Einride has had some success expanding beyond Sweden. It operates a fleet of 200 heavy-duty electric trucks in Europe, North America and the UAE, for companies such as Heineken, PepsiCo, Carlsberg Sweden and DP World. The company has made some inroads with its autonomous pod-like trucks with customers like Apotea in Sweden and GE Appliances in the United States.
Einride, which is also headquartered in the US in Austin, Texas, disclosed in its announcement that it has current annual recurring revenue (ARR) of approximately $45 million and a total contract base of $65 million ARR from signed customer contracts.
The company’s $100 million raise, announced in October, was intended to help the company scale with its customer base and accelerate development of autonomous freight technology, Charli said at the time.
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Einride previously raised $500 million in 2022 in a Series C equity and loan round. The $200 million equity-based stake came from backers including Northzone, EQT Ventures, Temasek, Swedish pension fund AMF, Polar Structure and Norrsken VC. It also secured $300 million in debt financing led by Barclays Europe. The $100 million raise in October included existing investor EQT Ventures and quantum computing company IonQ.
Einride joins other autonomous vehicle companies that have pursued SPAC mergers in recent years to secure additional financing.
Aurora, which started a commercial self-driving truck business (with a human observer on board), went public through a $13 billion SPAC merger in 2021. Self-driving truck startup Kodiak AI took the SPAC route to the public market earlier this year.
