PepsiCo (NASDAQ: PEP) and autonomous trucking company Gatik have announced a multi-year strategic partnership representing the largest commercial autonomous freight deployment ever undertaken.
The deal brings fully driverless trucks into one of the world’s most demanding consumer goods supply chains, with operations already live across Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas.
Gatik’s autonomous trucks currently serve around 250 retail locations for PepsiCo, including Walmart (NYSE: WMT) and Dollar General (NYSE: DG) stores across those three states.
The deliveries move across both highways and surface streets, a technical distinction that separates Gatik from many autonomous vehicle competitors still limited to interstate corridors.
“Serving our vast network of customers requires a supply chain that is safe, reliable and built for the future,” said Jim Farrell, senior vice president of supply chain at PepsiCo.
Farrell added that Gatik “brings the autonomous freight technology, commercial experience and scale we need to strengthen service, add capacity and move products more consistently for our customers.”
The partnership originally began in 2022, with Gatik transitioning to fully driver-out operations in June 2025, maintaining a 99% on-time delivery track record since that transition.
Gatik’s trucks operate with no safety drivers or observers in the cab, with Gautam Narang, CEO and co-founder, stating the company is “the only company that can make that claim today” in the trucking space.
Human oversight is provided through Gatik Remote Supervisors, who handle high-level go/no-go decisions without performing any remote driving or teleoperation on public roads, with one supervisor overseeing multiple trucks simultaneously.
Narang described the regulatory environment as no obstacle, stating “regulations are not, I would say, a bottleneck for us at all,” noting the company can already operate in 29 states with favorable autonomous vehicle frameworks.
Gatik, Isuzu Motors Ltd., and Nvidia are jointly developing a production facility in South Carolina that will begin mass-producing Level 4 autonomous trucks in the second half of 2027.
Narang outlined an aggressive scaling roadmap, saying current volumes are “in the hundreds of trucks,” but once the Isuzu facility is operational, “the volumes that we’re looking at are tens of thousands of trucks.”
The technology platform uses Gatik’s dynamic route orchestration system, which allows PepsiCo to add or remove delivery stops and adapt to shifting demand without overhauling existing logistics infrastructure.
PepsiCo has framed the deployment as capacity expansion rather than workforce reduction, targeting high-demand regional networks that are persistently difficult to staff as driver wages rise nationwide.
“Autonomous trucking has reached commercial scale when it operates inside one of the most demanding supply chains on the planet,” Narang said, adding that the Gatik-PepsiCo partnership is precisely that proof point.
