Electric trucking startup Harbinger has acquired self-driving software company Phantom AI in an effort to vertically integrate more technology and create new revenue streams for the young company.
The acquisition is Harbinger’s first and is part of the company’s plan to steadily expand its portfolio beyond the electric truck chassis it has been manufacturing and selling for the last year. Just last month, Harbinger announced it would begin selling battery packs for energy storage and auxiliary power, with Airstream as its first customer.
Harbinger announced Wednesday that it has already identified customers for its newly acquired Phantom advanced driver assistance technology. German automotive technology giant ZF Group has agreed to license the technology from Harbinger and plans to sell it to automakers for use in passenger cars. (Terms of the two deals were not disclosed.)
Harbinger co-founder and CEO John Harris told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview that he expects the new software services business unit to generate “millions of dollars” in revenue this year, but that revenue will be “insignificant” compared to what the company makes selling truck chassis. The startup recently raised $160 million in a funding round co-led by customers FedEx and THOR Industries.
In fact, Harris expects the partnership with ZF Group to bring in even more revenue in 2027 or 2028.
“The passenger car market is slowing down, but sales volumes are very large,” he said.
Harris said Harbinger already uses Phantom AI’s driver-assistance technology, and the acquisition will allow the two companies to deepen their integration. Harris expects this to be of great benefit to Harbinger’s customers.
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“Medium size [trucking] “Most mid-sized vehicles on the road don’t have backup cameras, air conditioning, lane keeping or automatic emergency braking,” he said. It just doesn’t exist on the market yet, which is crazy. ”
Harbinger is already promising commercial customers lower total cost of ownership, improved emissions compliance, and easier-to-drive trucks thanks to simpler, quieter electric powertrains. But Harris believes the safety features enabled by Phantom’s technology will make Harbinger’s chassis much better, especially because of how and where safety features tend to be used.
“Many of these vehicles spend their time traveling around truck ports or driving in and out of neighborhoods to deliver packages. They are all in areas where there is a very high safety risk of backing into vehicles, hitting pedestrians, hitting bicyclists, hitting children,” he said. “We don’t need to have the most advanced safety features of 2026, but we should at least have the safety features that were popular in 2020 or 2015.”
Although Harbinger’s headquarters are in Los Angeles, California, Phantom AI’s 30 employees, including management, will remain in Mountain View.
