Amazon is quietly accumulating a stake in Einride, the Swedish electric trucking company that said Tuesday it will deploy 500 Tesla Semis for Amazon and other customers.

Einride’s SEC filings show Amazon holding warrants for 25.2 million shares — about 12% of the company — that vest as Amazon buys freight services. The company’s financial report Tuesday, its first since going public in June, has the warrants on its books for the first time.

An Einride spokesperson confirmed that a “warrant contract asset” of 1.5 billion Swedish kronor (roughly $160 million) on the company’s balance sheet represents the Amazon warrants. It is the largest single asset on Einride’s books, worth more than its trucks and more than its cash.

At the same time, Einride is relying heavily on Amazon for growth, forecasting a 60% to 73% year-over-year revenue increase in the second half, “fueled by the Amazon ramp and other deployments in the U.S. and Europe,” as the company said in its earnings release.

Amazon announced in April that Einride would deploy 75 electric trucks with charging at five U.S. sites in its middle-mile network, the leg between warehouses and delivery stations.

Tesla Semi rollout: Einride also said Tuesday it will deploy 500 Tesla Semis across North America, calling it the largest deployment of Tesla’s electric big rigs in the world to date. The trucks will serve Amazon and other Einride customers on freight corridors in California, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois and Georgia, rolling out in phases over two years beginning in September, financed by third parties.

Tesla Semis are already hauling some Amazon freight. Nevoya, an all-electric trucking carrier based in Southern California, says it runs Amazon loads using Tesla Semis.

Amazon’s electric semis: Amazon has been turning to other manufacturers to electrify its freight network beyond the last-mile delivery vans it buys from Rivian. It deployed nearly 50 Volvo electric semis at Southern California ports and ordered more than 200 electric big rigs from Mercedes-Benz for Europe, part of a pledge to reach net-zero carbon across its operations by 2040.

Einride, for its part, doesn’t sell trucks. It buys and finances them, hires the drivers or contracts carriers, builds the charging infrastructure, and hauls a customer’s freight for a fee — using its own software, called Saga AI, to plan routes around charging windows and battery range.

The pitch to a shipper like Amazon is that it gets electric trucking capacity without purchasing vehicles itself or creating electric charging infrastructure.

Long-term autonomy: Einride is also one of a small group of companies running fully driverless trucks in commercial service in the U.S., with Level 4 autonomous vehicles operating in Ohio and more than 5,400 driverless hours logged for customers as of June 30.

The trucks hauling Amazon’s freight, however, have drivers, as will the Tesla Semis, for now. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on the company’s July earnings call that self-driving capability for the Semi is about a year away. That timeline would fall inside Einride’s two-year rollout.

Einride’s Amazon deal: Roozbeh Charli, the Einride CEO, said on the earnings call Tuesday that the April announcement with Amazon brought a wave of new business.

The takeaway for customers about Einride was, “If these guys can handle the complexity of Amazon’s network, they can handle ours,” he said, explaining that there was “quite a lot of inbound” following the news.

Charli said customers rarely specify hardware, and that Einride selects truck platforms based on the routes and the data. That would suggest Einride chose the Tesla Semis, not Amazon.

The Amazon warrants did not come up on the call. The terms have been technically public since April, buried in an exhibit to Einride’s merger filings with the SEC, but haven’t been previously reported, in part because Einride’s prospectuses refer to Amazon as “the Specified Party.”

Amazon’s financial arrangement with Einride follows a pattern.

• The company struck a similar deal with Plug Power in 2017, taking warrants for up to 55.3 million shares that vested as Amazon bought fuel-cell equipment for its warehouses.
• Amazon invested in Rivian in early 2019, then ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans from the startup later that year. The company owns about 12% of Rivian today.

Amazon did not respond to questions about the arrangement.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with comment from Einride. It was also corrected to note that Tesla Semis already haul Amazon freight for Nevoya, an electric trucking carrier.

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: What should Liverpool FC fans expect from Jeff Bezos as a member of the storied English Premier League club’s new minority ownership group? We consult the Amazon leadership principles for the answer.

Plus, a tip and an SEC filing lead to a scoop on a former Meta AI director’s new startup, the GeekWire Editorial Board convenes to decide whether Dave Clark’s Auger stays on the GeekWire 200 after moving its HQ to Dallas, and Microsoft quietly semi-retires its AI blob.

Related Stories and Links

Bezos and Liverpool FC

• Group including Jeff Bezos buys minority stake in Liverpool FC, with option to become controlling owner — CNBC
• Liverpool: FSG sell minority stake to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos-backed consortium led by Amit Bhatia — Sky Sports
• Bezos, Bhatia buy a stake in Liverpool: What does it mean for the club and FSG? — ESPN
• Bezos, Bhatia, Saverin buy Liverpool stake at $7 billion valuation — Sportico
• The Redmen TV — independent Liverpool FC fan channel

Noosphere and the Form D

• Ex-Meta AI research director raises $10.25M from Trilogy and Madrona for stealth physical AI startup
• Kevin T. Carlberg — founder’s research site

Auger and the GeekWire 200

• This former Amazon exec is moving his startup’s HQ to Texas, and he has a few notes for Seattle
• Dave and Leigh Anne Clark move Auger headquarters to Dallas — D Magazine
• GeekWire 200
• Seattle Engineering Centers
• New map traces Washington state’s tech ‘universe’ to a few key hubs, and shows what’s at risk
• ‘We can’t become callous’: KIRO hosts debate what a startup’s departure to Texas says about Seattle’s business climate — MyNorthwest

Microsoft and Mico

• Farewell, Mico: Microsoft’s cute little AI blob is going the way of Bob
• Microsoft starts merging its Copilot consumer and business apps in advance of ‘Super App’ rollout

Subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

One of the Seattle region’s most notable tech startups is moving its headquarters to Texas.

Supply chain technology startup Auger will maintain a major engineering office in Bellevue, Wash., where it got started. But the company’s co-founder and CEO, Dave Clark, the former Amazon operations chief, is officially back in Dallas, and he took the company’s HQ with him.

Founded in 2024, Auger has raised $150 million, including a $50 million Series B round led by Eclipse in July. Its software connects the systems that companies use to run their supply chains, integrating AI to help automate them. Its customers include Meta, Fanatics and Kimberly-Clark.

Clark, in an interview with GeekWire, said the move is about talent and family, not taxes. For one thing, Texas happens to better suit him and Auger co-founder Leigh Anne Clark, his wife. They’re running toward something rather than away, he said. They both grew up in the Southeast, and they had always intended to return to Texas at some point.

“I’d rather have a really hot month of August than a really gray month of February,” he said.

Dallas is also a place where you run into supply chain specialists at the coffee shop like you do software engineers in Seattle, he said. That’s a key talent pool for Auger at this stage in its evolution. Another bonus: Texas is more central to corporate customers across the country.

The magazine D CEO in Dallas, which first reported the news of Auger’s HQ relocation this week, noted that the company did not seek state or local incentives as part of the move.

Clark confirmed in the GeekWire interview Tuesday that taxes weren’t a factor, noting that he couldn’t even quantify what the tax advantages would be. However, he said, “There’s a lot I like about the way the state of Texas manages and works with business.”

When asked what he would say to people in Seattle who might see another warning sign in a startup like Auger moving its HQ somewhere else, he didn’t shoot down the premise.

“If you’re in that position, I think you’re right to be worried, in the sense that there’s a lot of discussion about things in the state of Washington and Seattle that are not particularly friendly to business,” he said.

Washington state lawmakers approved a “millionaires tax” this year, a 9.9% levy on personal income above $1 million. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson drew criticism from some in tech after saying of wealthy residents who leave the state, “like, bye.”

Clark didn’t point to any particular policy or issue but said he has sensed an “anti-business” sentiment that concerns him since moving back to the Seattle area from Texas to launch Auger.

“Seattle should just be careful,” he said. “It’s not preordained that they win these things. It’s not preordained that these big companies stay in town.”

The Pacific Northwest has enormous resources to compete globally, he added, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be “a phenomenal draw to anybody and everybody coming in.”

The region has “many, many strengths, and we should leverage them to the advantage of the community,” he said. “And sometimes I think the rhetoric gets in the way of it.”

Auger has about 115 people in Bellevue — engineers and supply chain data scientists — and Clark said he expects that office to grow 20% to 30% over the next year or two. He and Leigh Anne will both be back there regularly, he said, working alongside the team.

“Nothing’s changing there,” he said.

The company’s new HQ in North Dallas occupies part of the 15th floor of One Galleria Tower, centrally located between neighborhoods north and south of the city, with a quick run to DFW International Airport, as Clark pointed out in the D CEO article.

The office currently has about 15 people, most hired in recent months for sales, go-to-market and supply chain roles. Many of them had been traveling to Bellevue until the new space opened. Clark expects to add another 20 to 30 people in Dallas by the middle of next year.

As in Bellevue, where Auger subleased its space from Microsoft and bought the furniture for $1, the Dallas office came furnished. This time the furniture cost $10. (There goes Texas’ reputation for affordability.)

“It cost me 10 times more for the furniture in Dallas,” Clark joked. “I like nice things, cheap.”

Clark spent 23 years at Amazon, rising to lead its global operations and later its worldwide consumer business, and was one of the chief architects of the logistics network behind the company’s delivery operation. He left in 2022 to become CEO of Flexport, departing the freight startup the following year, before starting Auger.

Leigh Anne Clark is Auger’s president of fashion and beauty, leading the company’s work in an industry known for waste-prone supply chains. The couple, who met in Kentucky in 2000 while Dave Clark was at Amazon, have two sons, ages 14 and 11.

With its rapid hiring and significant early funding rounds, Auger rose quickly to No. 31 on the GeekWire 200, our ranking of Pacific Northwest tech startups. Because the GeekWire 200 is limited to companies based in the region, the headquarters move puts Auger’s standing in jeopardy.

Informed of this predicament, Clark made his pitch to stay on. “We still have a lot of dev there,” he said of the Bellevue office. “I think you get grandfathered into the list in some way, right?”

Meanwhile, the business keeps growing. Clark said Auger signed two major contracts Tuesday with customers he declined to name. The Bellevue office marked them with a bell-ringing, and the two offices celebrated together over a video call. A second bell is on order for Dallas.

“We’ll have dual bells that we’ll ring together,” Clark said.