Einride, the Swedish startup blending electric trucks with autonomous operations, plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a merger with Legato Merger Corp. III, valuing the company at about $1.8 billion. It’s a high-profile test of whether public markets are ready to finance the next leg of autonomous and zero-emission freight at industrial scale.
The transaction is structured to deliver roughly $219 million in gross proceeds before any redemptions, with Einride also seeking up to $100 million in PIPE financing. Existing Einride shareholders are expected to retain about 83% of the combined company, which targets a closing in the first half of 2026. Legato currently trades on NYSE American under the ticker LEGT; the combined company would list on the NYSE.
Operationally, Einride says it is active across seven countries and serves more than two dozen enterprise shippers. The company’s commercial footprint includes a fleet of about 200 vehicles, with customers such as GE Appliances already using Einride’s tech in live freight operations.
For carriers and shippers weighing real-world maturity, Einride points to performance metrics more typical of established logistics providers than of an early-stage AV entrant: 11 million electric miles driven, roughly 350,000 shipments executed, and some 1,700 driverless hours under customer contracts. The company cites a contracted ARR base of $65 million and a run-rate ARR of about $45 million, underpinned by a multi-revenue model that includes freight capacity-as-a-service and licensing of its planning and autonomy software.
The U.S. is a strategic growth market in that plan. Einride, which maintains a U.S. headquarters in Austin, says it intends to expand domestic R&D, build out hardware supply chains, and add jobs as it scales autonomous deployments granted permits in both the United States and Europe. For freight buyers, that could translate into faster access to driverless yard and short-haul applications and denser EV charging coverage on key corridors.
Context matters: the SPAC path has been bumpy for transport tech. A number of EV and trucking startups that rode the 2020–2021 boom later collapsed or restructured, a reminder that scaling hardware-heavy businesses in freight is capital intensive and unforgiving. Einride’s merger arrives with those lessons fresh, alongside continued regulatory scrutiny of autonomous operations.
Separately, a shareholder-rights law firm said November 12 it has opened an investigation into the Legato–Einride deal—routine for SPAC combinations but still a factor boards and investors track for potential litigation risk and closing timelines. The firm’s notice indicated Legato investors would receive one Einride share for each Legato ordinary share in the form of ADS, pending customary approvals.
Why this matters for trucking: if redemptions are manageable and PIPE appetite materializes, Einride would bring public-market capital to a model aimed at turning autonomy into a service layer on top of electric linehaul and campus moves. That could nudge more large shippers to pilot autonomous yard and fixed-route operations where duty cycles and controlled environments favor early adoption—and could pressure incumbents to accelerate their own EV and AD roadmaps.
Near term, watch three markers: PIPE commitments, redemption rates, and the SEC/shareholder approval cadence. The parties are guiding to a first-half 2026 close, but the strength of the capital stack at closing will determine how quickly Einride can expand stations, fleets and autonomous programs in the U.S. and Europe.
Sources: FreightWaves, Reuters, PR Newswire, Einride, TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, GlobeNewswire
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