Defendant
1 case as defendant.
Bot Auto TX, Inc. (commonly "Bot Auto") is a privately held autonomous-trucking company headquartered in Houston, Texas, with an operating base in Brookshire, TX. It was founded in 2023 by Dr. Xiaodi Hou, a TuSimple co-founder and former CEO/CTO, and emerged publicly in fall 2024 with $20 million in pre-Series A funding (CB Insights puts total raised at about $20M). Forbes reported in 2025 that Bot Auto reached hub-to-hub autonomy in 15 months on roughly $16 million with about 45 employees; the company described a fleet of about a dozen retrofitted Freightliner tractors in 2026. It is not publicly traded and no parent owner is disclosed.
Bot Auto develops SAE Level 4 autonomous driving technology and sells it as an operations business rather than a software license: it owns and operates its own fleet as a motor carrier under its own DOT number, offering Transportation as a Service (TaaS) to brokers and shippers, initially on Houston–Dallas and Houston–San Antonio lanes in the Texas freight triangle. Partners include broker Ryan Transportation and a Steves & Sons pilot managed with J.B. Hunt. In April 2026 the company announced the first fully humanless over-the-road commercial truckload in the U.S., a 230-mile Houston-to-Hutchins run.
The litigation posture is purely defensive: two tracked cases, zero as plaintiff. Both were filed by Hou's former company, CreateAI Holdings, Inc. (f/k/a TuSimple Holdings, Inc.) and TuSimple, Inc. The Texas Business Court case (Harris County, 11th Division, No. 24-BC11A-0007) alleges misappropriation of autonomous-driving trade secrets under the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act; the Fifteenth Court of Appeals affirmed denial of a temporary injunction on September 15, 2026, and Bot Auto has filed counterclaims including bad-faith assertion. The second suit, filed July 21, 2025 in the Southern District of Texas, adds patent infringement allegations against Bot Auto's trucks (asserting patents including U.S. 11,577,776 and 12,190,609). Venues are the plaintiff's home Texas forums, not the Eastern District of Texas.
Sources: bot.auto; TechCrunch; Forbes; Transport Topics; CCJ; Fifteenth Court of Appeals opinion (No. 15-25-00001-CV); CB Insights.
Trade-secret case under the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act alleging misappropriation of AV technology. Temporary injunction was denied and TRO dissolved; the denial was appealed and affirmed by the Fifteenth Court of Appeals. Not a patent case.