Self-Driving Truck Company TuSimple Files To Go Public

Autonomous truck company TuSimple filed on Wednesday (April 7) to go public, estimating a share price that would value the company at nearly $8 billion.

TuSimple, which is based in San Diego but funded by investors from around the world, filed a statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) laying out the details of a traditional IPO run by investment banks. Many tech companies going public this year are doing so with special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs.

TuSimple said it will sell 33,783,783 shares and predicted they’ll fetch $37 each. The company’s SEC filing states the public offering could fetch $35 per share, for a total of $1.18 billion raised, or as much as $39 per share, for a total of $1.32 billion. If the offering proceeds as planned, the company will upon the IPO’s completion have 212,263,328 shares outstanding — roughly $8 billion worth, depending on the share price.

Explaining its business model in a securities filing, TuSimple wrote: “Autonomous trucking benefits a wide array of industry stakeholders. We believe that the benefits to stakeholders across the truck freight industry will accelerate the adoption of autonomous trucking. Shippers’, carriers’ and railroads’ needs continue to become increasingly complex as shipping timeline expectations shorten and onerous seasonal shipping requirements further burden the truck freight demand and supply balance. We believe that the shortage of semi-truck drivers is one of the most significant industry challenges and that autonomy provides the most viable solution.

“Shippers, which include retailers, manufacturers and distributors, must constantly manage their captive fleets and additional capacity from carriers to match their freight capacity with current demand. This logistical challenge is exacerbated during peak season, which generally occurs in the U.S. leading up to the holiday season from mid-August through October. We believe that a reliable autonomous solution at scale will help shippers guarantee freight capacity, including during peak season. This will also allow shippers to allocate their increasingly scarce driver supply to customer-facing first- and last-mile operations.”

TuSimple stated in SEC filings that offering participants, in various capacities, will include Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, BofA Securities, Cowen, Credit Suisse, Nomura, RBC Capital Markets, Baird, Needham & Company, Oppenheimer & Co., Piper Sandler and Valuable Capital.