Kodiak AI announced it has won a contract from the U.S. Marine Corps to help create autonomous military ground vehicles. 

The company said it will integrate Kodiak Driver, the AI-powered autonomous driving system, into the U.S. Marine Corps’ remotely operated ground unit for expeditionary fires (ROGUE-Fires) carrier ground vehicle. 

ROGUE-Fires enables distributed maritime operations and expeditionary force projection, particularly across the contested terrain of the Indo-Pacific. The contact will enable the U.S. Marine Corps to understand how autonomous operations can extend reach and reduce risk to Marines. 

“The Kodiak Driver is a powerful dual-use capability that leverages physical AI to strengthen defense readiness through scalable and adaptive applications in order to keep Marines out of harm’s way,” said Don Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak AI. “We have extensively tested our autonomous system in our prior efforts with the military and believe this work with the Marine Corps allows us to further showcase how Kodiak’s technology performs in unstructured and unmapped environments.”

In 2022, Kodiak was selected for a three-year contract with the U.S. Army to deliver an end-to-end autonomous solution for the U.S. Army Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV) program. Through this program, the company conducted real-world testing in off-road and combat-relevant environments, including California mountainous grasslands, Texas deserts, and Michigan snow.