Glid announces $3.1M pre-seed funding to commercialize road-to-rail autonomy

Glīd Technologies, a developer of autonomous road-to-rail solutions for the crucial “first mile” of freight movement, today announced the successful close of its oversubscribed $3.1 million pre-seed funding round. The investment, led by Outlander VC with participation from Draper U Ventures, Antler, The Veteran Fund, M1C, and a coalition of mission-aligned angel investors, underscores growing confidence in Glīd’s approach to tackling the most congested and costly segment of the global supply chain.

With the freight market projected to exceed $20 trillion by 2033, Glīd’s autonomous, dual-mode Gīders are poised to transform static rail corridors into dynamic, high-throughput delivery networks. This, it says, eliminates the friction and inefficiencies that plague current logistics operations.

Glīd designed the solution to autonomously handle containers at ports and transit yards, moving them through the system leveraging rail corridors. The dual-mode Gīders operate seamlessly on both road and rail. The vehicles move standard containers directly onto the rail network without the need for terminals, drayage, or lift equipment, enabling continuous, on-demand freight flow.

Kevin A. Damoa, founder and CEO of Glīd, told The Robot Report, “We’re building the logistics infrastructure of tomorrow—autonomous, resilient, and secure for both commercial and contested environments, whether it’s accelerating throughput at congested ports, operating across austere terrain, or strengthening supply chains for critical industries, Glīd delivers where legacy systems fail. This is not just automation. It’s sovereignty. It’s security. And it’s what American innovation is built for.”

The company recently unveiled two breakthrough technologies that redefine what’s possible in first-mile logistics. Rāden is an unmanned, hybrid-electric road-to-rail vehicle, built to autonomously travel across both modes of infrastructure. With a low-profile design and clean LPG-based range extension, Rāden can be deployed in complex, off-grid, and high-throughput environments where traditional logistics vehicles cannot go.

Alongside Rāden, Glīd debuted EZRA-1SIX, its proprietary AI logistics orchestration platform. This intelligent system powers real-time dispatch, multimodal autonomy, and secure, human-in-the-loop operations across commercial and defense domains.

With the funding, Glīd is moving beyond research

This investment facilitates Glīd’s shift from research and development to real-world deployment. The company said it will use the capital to launch GliderM, a manned, hybrid-electric road-to-rail vehicle, into field operations in California and Washington in Q3 2025.

GliderM is designed to move 20-foot containers and heavy payloads directly from road to rail without forklifts or additional transloading, which can reduce costs and improve labor efficiency. Glīd will also advance the Rāden platform’s development, expand EZRA-1SIX capabilities, grow its engineering and business development teams, and strengthen partnerships with ports, rail operators, and government agencies.

“The first mile of our supply chain hasn’t evolved since the advent of rail, and it’s now the biggest bottleneck for moving goods. Glīd offers the most timely and innovative solution we’ve seen to fix it, from commercial freight to critical defense logistics,” said Jordan Kretchmer, Senior Partner at Outlander VC and Glīd board member. “With decades of experience in rail and logistics, this team is uniquely positioned to lead the transformation.”

The company’s business model is a robots-as-a-service subscription that it describes as Mobility-as-a-Service. Damoa has his sights set on creating a large fleet of Gliders that can be redeployed around the country as needed, to meet the logistics needs for both commercial and defense customers.

One of the differentiators for Glid Technologies is its management and development team. CEO Kevin Damoa is a serial entrepreneur with a deep background in logistics who started with career in the U.S. Army. The team includes Chaitali Narla, CTO; Tony Petraborg, Chief Engineer; and Matt Mueller, COO.