Harbinger Raises $240 Million Series D for Electric Trucks and Defense

Harbinger, a Garden Grove, Calif., company that builds electric medium-duty truck platforms, said on Nov. 5 that it has raised $240 million in a Series D funding round. The company said the round brings its total funding to more than $650 million since it was founded in 2021.

The money is meant to push Harbinger beyond trucks into energy storage, power generation, autonomy software and defense work, while it keeps increasing manufacturing capacity for its medium-duty platform.

Who put money into Harbinger’s Series D

The release headline credits Tiger Global with leading the round. The body of the announcement describes it as co-led by Tiger Global, Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund and Ridgeline.

Several groups joined them. Fidelity Management & Research Company, Squarepoint Capital and Xantium came in as crossover investors, a term for funds that back private companies and also buy publicly traded stocks. Earlier backers returned, among them Maniv, Greycroft, Australian Gulf Capital, PanaceaVC, ArcTern Ventures and Leitmotif. FedEx and THOR Industries invested through TechNexus as strategic investors in mobility, and BuildGroup participated as a data center investor.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley acted as placement agents, the banks that help a private company find investors for a round. Harbinger did not disclose a valuation.

Where the new money is going

According to the company, the funds will pay for expansion into several product areas:

• commercial vehicles
• energy storage systems
• power generation
• autonomy software
• defense applications

Part of the money will also go toward ramping up production of its medium-duty vehicle platform. Harbinger makes all-electric and hybrid versions of that platform, plus battery and drivetrain systems, auxiliary power equipment and self-driving technology. The company says its products are used in medium-duty trucks, recreational vehicles, mobile healthcare units, power infrastructure and defense vehicles.

Harbinger describes its approach as deep vertical integration, meaning it designs and controls most of the parts of its products in-house instead of buying them from suppliers. It says this gives it control over development, performance, cost and scale.

What it means for FedEx and other customers

FedEx is both an investor and a large customer. Harbinger said FedEx recently ordered 2,000 all-electric Harbinger trucks, an order the company valued at more than $300 million. Harbinger also said that Paul Melander, FedEx’s senior vice president of safety and transportation, recently joined its board of directors.

For fleet buyers like FedEx, part of the new funding goes to building more of the medium-duty platform. THOR Industries, a recreational vehicle maker, also came in as a strategic investor, and Harbinger says its platform is already used in RVs.

How the investors and the CEO describe the bet

Harbinger co-founder and CEO John Harris said the company aims to rethink critical systems from first principles and called electrification central to industry, defense, mobility and AI.

Griffin Schroeder, a partner at Tiger Global, said his firm led the financing because it sees value in taking Harbinger’s technical and manufacturing skills into new markets. He described electrification as “one of the most pressing bottlenecks of the AI era,” a reference to the power demands of AI computing and data centers.

BuildGroup, which Harbinger listed as an investor in data centers, joined the round as the company prepares energy storage and power generation products. Harbinger has not said when products in those new areas will reach customers.

Source: PR Newswire