Bot Auto, Inc. — commonly "Bot Auto" — is a privately held autonomous-trucking developer headquartered in Houston, Texas (with operating facilities around Brookshire, TX, west of Houston). Related entities in the litigation record include Bot Auto TX, Inc. and Bot Auto CA, Inc. The company was founded in 2023 by Dr. Xiaodi Hou, the former co-founder/CEO/CTO of TuSimple; some business databases list a 2024 founding. It raised roughly $20 million in Pre-A funding (2024). Employee count and revenue are not publicly disclosed.
Operations. Bot Auto develops and operates Level 4 autonomous driving technology for Class 8 semi-trucks rather than licensing software to OEMs. It runs a transportation-as-a-service (TaaS) model as a carrier, selling freight capacity directly to shippers and brokers. Its fleet consists of Freightliner tractors retrofitted with its own sensor, perception, decision-making and safety stack, operating lanes within the Texas "trucking triangle" (notably Houston–Dallas and Houston–San Antonio). The company has publicly reported humanless commercial runs on Texas highways and has built out mission-control/remote-assistance operations. Leadership includes President/COO Brett Suma, formerly of Knight Transportation.
Litigation posture. Bot Auto is an operating company, and its sole tracked federal case is a defensive one: as defendant in 1 of 1 cases, 0 as plaintiff. The matter is TuSimple, Inc. et al. v. Bot Auto, Inc. et al. (No. 4:25-cv-03371), filed July 21, 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas (Judge Charles Eskridge) and docketed as patent infringement. Bot Auto moved to dismiss and later to stay proceedings pending that motion.
Context. The federal suit is one front in broader litigation between Hou's Bot Auto and his former company, now CreateAI Holdings (formerly TuSimple Holdings). Parallel actions include a Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act case in the Texas Business Court — where the 15th Court of Appeals affirmed denial of a temporary injunction — and a California state trade-secret/contract suit against Hou and other former TuSimple personnel. The federal patent case alleges Bot Auto's autonomous trucks practice TuSimple patents covering sensor configurations, steering redundancy and map construction.