Ten of TuSimple's large self-driving trucks will be auctioned later this month, just weeks after the self-driving truck startup that went public in 2021 announced it was exiting the U.S. market. The trucks, along with a large amount of research and development equipment and office supplies, will be sold through two online auctions. The first session is scheduled for January 23-25, and the second session is scheduled for February 6-8.
A spokesman for the auction company confirmed that "initially" 10 trucks would be sold. TuSimple, which has offices in San Diego and operations facilities in Tucson, Arizona, reported in November that it had 35 self-driving trucks in the U.S. It's unclear what happened to the other 25 trucks.
TuSimple's fall from lofty startup status to being touted as an "unbelievable offer!!" in an online auction shows just how treacherous the path for self-driving startups has become.
Coincidentally, Embark Technologies sold itself in 2023 (also auctioning off some trucks), just two years after the company went public, in a deal that valued it at more than $5 billion. ArgoAI shut down the company at the end of 2022, despite having big backers like Ford and Volkswagen. Cruise suspended operations, laid off employees and fired several executives after a car crash late last year.
Founded in 2015, TuSimple was one of the earlier companies to try to skip ahead to developing fully driverless trucks for transporting goods across the country. It even won a brief contract in 2019 to carry mail between Phoenix and Dallas distribution centers for the USPS.
Although TuSimple often positions itself as an American startup, its founders and funding come from China. The company, which went public in 2021, quickly came under scrutiny from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States because of its Chinese background. The company was also subsequently investigated by the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and in late 2022 it lost a major deal to develop self-driving large trucks with trucking giant Navistar. Since then, the company's stock price has continued to fall, from a high of $62.58 in July 2021 to the current price of $0.73.
TuSimple has been changing its priorities for much of 2023, at one point saying it was selling its China operations and later changing course and announcing it was winding down its U.S. operations. In December, the company said it would exit the U.S. market entirely, laying off more than 150 people.