As the U.S. trucking business gears up for the destructive impacts of latest Trump tariffs on items from Mexico and Canada, a startup constructing a brand new form of trucking insurance coverage — a vital price for truck drivers — has raised some cash to develop, and (it hopes) assist truckers climate the adjustments.
Nirvana, an AI-based insurance coverage platform that makes use of real-time driving telematics plus 20 billion miles of truck driving information to construct and handle insurance coverage insurance policies for truckers, has raised $80 million in new funding. The Series C will probably be used to construct extra companies for fleets and particular person drivers.
The funding values Nirvana at $830 million post-money. This is greater than double Nirvana’s earlier valuation of $350 million, courting from when it raised a Series B in October 2023.
Rushil Goel, Nirvana’s CEO and co-founder, described the spherical as “pre-emptive” — raised on the again of inbound curiosity relatively than the startup needing the money.
The funding is coming from three earlier backers, with General Catalyst main and Lightspeed Venture Partners and Valor Equity Partners collaborating.
The traders are doubling down amidst some development for the San Francisco-based startup. Nirvana mentioned that its whole worth in premiums underneath administration is now at over $100 million, doubling within the final 12 months.
Nirvana’s development is coming on the nexus of some developments.
The trucking business is doubtlessly an unlimited marketplace for Nirvana and others. Overall, U.S. trucking generated greater than $900 billion in revenues in 2024, accounting for 77% of the freight market within the nation, in accordance with figures from the American Trucking Association. It employs round 8.5. million individuals, 3.5 million of them drivers, with some 14.3 million single-axle and mixture vehicles registered, accounting for some 5% of all motor automobiles within the nation.
The business has been on a development for development, up 1.6% in 2025 and projected to development to some $1.46 trillion in revenues by 2035.
That was, nevertheless, earlier than occasions of the final month — specifically, Trump’s wider financial insurance policies and particularly his push to institute import taxes on items from Canada and Mexico as a way to increase federal income, and to drive extra home manufacturing.
“Imposing border taxes on our two largest and most necessary buying and selling companions will undo… progress and lift prices for customers,” mentioned the American Trucking Association earlier this month. “The 100,000 full-time hardworking truckers hauling 85% of the floor commerce in items with Mexico and 67% of the products traded with Canada will bear a direct and disproportionate impression.”
Not solely will tariffs scale back cross-border freight, the affiliation added, however they may even improve operational prices. The price ticket of a brand new truck may rise by as much as $35,000, it estimated, “amounting to a $2 billion annual tax and placing new tools out of attain for small carriers.”
All of this boils all the way down to trucking companies needing to be extra aware than ever earlier than of prices, and that is the place Nirvana is hoping to play an element.
Or, to place it one other approach, that is the place Nirvana wants to play an element — in any other case it’d discover itself hit by the identical issues which might be hitting its prospects.
“The tariffs and associated provide chain are disruptions which might be definitely developing,” Goel mentioned in an interview. “And in fact, in an business like trucking, which drives 70% of the freight within the U.S., there’s definitely some impression of that to be anticipated. It’s our new actuality.”
The firm’s platform covers insurance coverage each for fleets (teams of greater than 10 ‘energy models’) and non-fleets (1-9 models), and — like different new gamers in insurance coverage — charging is usage-based, on a “pay as you drive” foundation that additionally incorporates security information utilizing telematics from the automobiles plus information logged by the FMSCA, the trucking regulator.
That security information additionally varieties a part of the corporate’s security analytics product. In addition to this and the underwriting tech that Nirvana claims produces quotes 15 instances sooner than a conventional insurer, it additionally has constructed AI instruments that it says automates and hastens claims processing.
Similar to different legacy markets like industrial know-how, trucking has been a ripe space for tech startups over the past a number of years.
Tapping into improvements in areas like cloud computing, AI, fintech, and linked automobiles, startups are spinning up new Cloud Software-based merchandise to assist drivers construct out their companies extra effectively and trucking corporations run their fleets extra seamlessly. Other corporations in the identical area embody Lula (backed by Khosla and others), SmartHop, Fairmatic and CloudTrucks.
Beyond that, startups are taking formidable swings on the vehicles themselves, engaged on electrical and autonomous automobiles for the following era of transportation.
Similarly, insurance coverage has been in the course of an evolution. A wave of “insurtech” startups have rethought learn how to provision insurance coverage for customers. Playing on the idea of “neobanks” that create a extra dynamic consumer expertise on prime of legacy infrastructure, a lot the identical has performed out amongst insurance coverage startups. Alongside this, they’re additionally tapping into improvements round massive information and AI to rethink how companies themselves are priced and provisioned.
General Catalyst declined to be interviewed for this story, nevertheless it’s notable that its greatest bigwig, CEO Hemant Taneja, is main this spherical for the agency, a sign of its confidence on this explicit guess.
“Insurance is historically a technologically bereft market, ripe for change. Nirvana is proving a disruptive mannequin, discovering wealthy information at scale and constructing AI across the advanced steps of offering business insurance coverage from quote by way of claims,” he mentioned in an announcement. “We’ve been excited to be a associate of their unbelievable outcomes, and this funding will speed up Nirvana even additional.”
