Autonomous freight venture Einride AB and the publicly traded company with which it plans to merge have raised more than $113 million from a group of new and existing investors, a key step toward their plan to join forces and list Einride on the New York Stock Exchange.
In a statement, leaders of Einride and special-purpose acquisition company Legato Merger Corp. III said the funding round valued 10-year-old Einride’s equity at $1.35 billion, down 25% from its previously assigned value of $1.8 billion. They disclosed few details about the investor group beyond saying that EQT Ventures, which is based in Sweden like Einride, and “a global asset management company based on the West Coast” are part of the consortium.
Despite now sporting lower equity, the funding amount is a positive signal for Einride, which operates about 200 autonomous electric vehicles and, late last year, was booking $45 million in annualized revenue, in terms of appetite from key investors. When they announced in November their plan to go public via Legato’s listing, CEO Roozbeh Charli (pictured above) and his team signaled their intent to raise an additional $100 million.
“With this additional capital, we believe we are well-positioned to scale our commercial deployments of electric and autonomous freight solutions with both existing and new customers, while continuing to invest in our automated driving system and intelligent freight platform,” Charli said in a statement.
Alongside announcing the financing round, Einride and Legato leaders said they could seek to raise additional funds before completing their merger. Einride’s team has already raised another $100 million via a crossover financing deal common in the run-up to a public listing. It is in line to receive some of the $220 million Legato is holding in trust.
A key consideration with the latter is how much of that amount investors redeem in the run-up to the IPO: As Kodiak AI Inc. last September was completing a similar reverse merger, investors pulled all but $63 million of the $560 million held in trust.
If things go to plan from here for Einride and Legato, they’ll complete their union by midyear, and Einride will take over Legato’s NYSE listing under the ticker symbol ENRD.
