At one point, it jumped more than 20% before the market! Einride (ENRD.US) and Nvidia (NVDA.US) reach a strategic partnership to accelerate the deployment of autonomous heavy trucks

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Swedish autonomous truck manufacturer Einride AB (ENRD.US) announced on Monday that it has established a strategic partnership with Nvidia (NVDA.US) to accelerate the development and deployment of autonomous heavy trucks. Driven by this news, Einride's stock price once surged more than 20% during pre-market trading on Monday.

Under the partnership, EinRide will adapt Nvidia's Drive Hyperion platform to heavy-duty trucks and expand its computing, sensor, software, and security architecture to meet the needs of freight operations. Einride also plans to deploy Nvidia Blackwell architectures on a large scale through Nvidia Exemplar Cloud partners to train, test, and optimize its autonomous driving models. Nvidia will provide the underlying computing platform and artificial intelligence tools for Einride's autonomous driving system.

Henrik Green, Einride's Chief Technology Officer, said: “We have our customers, operational experience, and technology. Building the next generation Einride Driver on the Nvidia Hyperion platform will enable us to expand autonomous driving deployments in the freight networks that already serve our customers.”

Einride currently operates hundreds of electric trucks for large cargo customers in the US, Europe, and the Middle East. The company expects demand to increase to 1,500 to 2,000 vehicles by 2028; about 80% of these will be suitable for automation in the medium term. This additional demand will be superimposed on its driverless trucks already in operation.

Rishi Dhall, vice president of Nvidia's automotive business, said that autonomous trucks — using autonomous vehicles that require minimal human intervention — provide an opportunity to improve the safety and efficiency of global freight.

Einride was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in Stockholm. This summer, the company began trading on NASDAQ after completing a merger with blank check company Legato Merger Corp. III; the deal valued Einride's equity at $1.35 billion before accounting for transaction proceeds. The company develops electric autonomous freight vehicles and software platforms for customers such as Pepsi (PEP.US) and European winemakers Carlsberg and Heineken (HEINY.US).

The partnership with Nvidia is the latest step in advancing the wider application of autonomous or driverless trucks. Previously, Waymo's autonomous passenger taxis under Alphabet (GOOGL.US) and Tesla (TSLA.US) driverless taxis were already popular in US cities; Daimler Trucks' North American business has tested road trucks for the US market; and Caterpillar (CAT.US)'s autonomous driving and remote control bulldozers have also been put into use in some landfills.