Glīd is building an autonomous shortcut to move freight from road to rail — catch it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

Kevin Damoa came face-to-face with the challenges and dangers of moving freight from road to rail as a 17-year-old U.S. Army enlistee tasked with loading tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles onto the railroad. It was — as the mechanical engineer and founder of Glīd Technologies puts it — the beginning of his love story with logistics.

It’s a love story that persisted through a 13-year stint with the U.S. Air Force National Guard as a firefighter to his roles in the private sector at SpaceX, Northrup Grumman, Romeo Power Tech, and Xos Trucks — to name a few.

But it wasn’t until 2022, while working on the Harley-Davidson e-bike brand spinoff Serial 1, that Damoa circled back to the road-to-rail problem.

“I had my come-to-Jesus moment,” Damoa recalled of the pivotal moment when he decided to strike out on his own. “I looked around the globe, and I was like, ‘OK, rail is broken, ports are really congested, roads are congested, the fatalities on roads are crazy. Why aren’t more folks using rail?’ And then, my 17-year-old self tapped me on the shoulder, was like, ‘Because it’s hard to get things from road to rail.’”

Damoa pinpointed the problem: the complex, multi-step process moving a container from a ship to a freight train. He founded Glīd Technologies to try and solve it. The California-based startup (pronounced Glide) is among the 20 Startup Battlefield finalists competing at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.

Glīd isn’t trying to compete with trains. Instead, the company is focused on that first mile from port to railroad, as well as road-to-rail applications within large industrial parks.

“The first mile is where all your problems happen,” he said. “This is where you unload ships and stack up your containers and then figure out where they’re intended to go to. That process is still broken and involves a bunch of steps.”

Once a ship arrives at port, a crane picks up a container and loads it onto a hostler truck, a vehicle used to maneuver short distances, where it’s then driven to a tall stack. A forklift picks up the container and moves it into the stack. Later, a forklift is used to load it back onto a hostler truck, which then drives over to the railroad. A forklift or crane is then used to pick up the container and load it on a freight train, where it waits.

Glīd has developed several hardware and software products to speed up and reduce the cost of getting shipping containers to the railhead and eventually their destination. Its first is GliderM, a hybrid-electric vehicle with a hook on the back that can pick up and move 20-foot containers directly to the rail without the need for forklifts of hostler trucks.

The startup is also developing logistics software and an armored, low-profile platform called the Rāden that can slide under any trailer, lift it, and move autonomously along the road to rail.

“You can look at us as the baton racer,” he said, describing the system. “We hand that load off to the next to the middle mile; the name of the game is utilization — you know, how many containers can we get within that first mile, within a day, in order to maximize or optimize our costs.”

And the cost structure is compelling. By cutting out forklifts and hostler trucks and using the railroad instead of semi trucks for delivery, Damoa said he is able to offer the company’s mobility-as-a-service system at a fraction of the cost. Customers are charged a$300,000 subscription a year, which gives them access to a GliderM or Rāden and their logistics software called EZRA-1SIX. Customers are also charged 8 cents per ton per mile. Damoa said that’s a deal since companies are getting a train, truck, and a forklift all in one, plus the service. By comparison, the per ton per mile cost today — if the transloading, train, and truck fees are included — is about $2.27, according to Damoa.

The 14-person startup is focused on short rail systems, ports that own the track, and industrial parks. Glīd has already signed deals with four short-line railroads as well as the Port of Woodland in Washington, Taylor Transport out of Vancouver, and Great Plains Industrial Park, a 6,800-acre site in Kansas with 30 miles of internal rail lines and an onsite transload facility.

Glīd’s tech and business model has also resonated with investors who see potential in the tech and business model.

Damoa said the first couple of years was hard, noting he couldn’t pay a person to invest in Glīd. But once he went through the Antler startup accelerator program, which gave him critical CEO and pitch skills, the startup had more success. Glīd received an investment before building its first prototype.

The startup announced in July it raised $3.1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Outlander VC, with participation from Draper U Ventures, Antler, The Veteran Fund, M1C, and angel investors. It has since raised more, putting its total at $7.1 million with a post-money valuation of $35 million.

If you want to learn more about Glīd from the company itself — while also checking out dozens of others, hearing their pitches, and listening to guest speakers on four different stages — join us at Disrupt, October 27 to 29 in San Francisco. Learn more here.