Teleo

Overview

Teleo turned existing dozers, loaders, and haul trucks into remotely operated and supervised-autonomous machines. Founded in 2019 by former Google and Lyft autonomy leaders Vinay Shet and Rom Clément, the company pursued a pragmatic middle ground: keep a human in the loop, let that operator oversee several machines, and retrofit the mixed fleet a contractor already owned.^[1]

That incremental strategy produced named customers, dealer distribution, $29.8 million in reported funding, and a strategic buyer. Havoc acquired Teleo in March 2026 to add ground vehicles to an autonomy system spanning sea, air, and land.^[3][15] The undisclosed price prevents a financial verdict. The operating story is clearer: Teleo made autonomy deployable before it was complete, but scaling safety-critical hardware, field service, and fleet software favored a larger platform.

Founding Story

Shet and Clément brought unusually relevant backgrounds to the problem. Shet had led product work for Lyft's self-driving program after working on Google Street View, Maps, and reCAPTCHA. Clément had worked on self-driving systems at Lyft and on Street View at Google.^[1] Public sources do not explain exactly how the pair met. They do show a shared conclusion from consumer autonomous vehicles: waiting for complete autonomy delayed customer value.

Shet described that conclusion directly in a 2023 interview: “I had a front row seat to see that while there is a lot of advancement in machine learning and AI, there’s a limit to how far it can go in building a fully finished product.”^[7] Construction and mining offered a different deployment surface. Worksites were bounded, machines repeated defined tasks, and operators already faced dangerous, remote, or uncomfortable conditions.

The product premise was supervised autonomy rather than an empty cab at any cost. In the company's 2023 expansion announcement, Shet said, “We founded Teleo to help contractors supercharge their operators’ efforts by turning their equipment into semi-autonomous machines.”^[5] A remote operator could handle difficult moments while software performed repeatable movements. Teleoperation also put the company into real workflows sooner, where it could collect the operating data needed to improve automation.

That choice shaped the company. Teleo built an OEM-agnostic retrofit, a site network, a command center, and an analytics layer for machines that contractors already owned. The compromise increased integration work, but it matched how contractors bought and maintained equipment.

Timeline

• 2019: Shet and Clément founded Teleo.^[1]
• Winter 2020: Teleo joined Y Combinator.^[1]
• June 2022: Teleo raised a $12 million Series A led by UP.Partners.^[2]
• March–April 2023: The company announced Teichert, Tomahawk Construction, and John Aarts Group as customers and launched a dealer network across North America and Europe.^[5][9]
• October 2023: Teleo said eight new customers had ordered 42 machines and Tomahawk would deploy autonomous functions on an active jobsite.^[6]
• November 2024: Two Series A extensions added $16.2 million and brought company-reported funding to $29.8 million.^[3]
• March 11, 2026: Havoc closed its acquisition of Teleo; terms were undisclosed.^[15]

What They Built

Teleo sold an integrated system. A customer first installed a mesh network on the worksite. Teleo then fitted a universal hardware kit to an existing machine and installed a remote command center. Operators used live camera feeds and controls to drive equipment from a desk. The same interface let them hand repetitive tasks to autonomy and intervene when conditions exceeded the software's operating envelope.^[4]

The cross-brand retrofit was the commercial wedge. Contractors often owned fleets spanning Caterpillar, John Deere, Komatsu, and other manufacturers. Replacing that installed base to gain autonomy would bind the customer to an expensive equipment cycle. Teleo instead tried to make the existing fleet programmable.

Its second product layer was operator multiplication. One person could supervise multiple machines and switch between sites, reducing idle time when a machine lacked an available driver. Teleo Insite added live and historical operating data through a browser, giving managers visibility that a cab-bound operator could not provide.^[4]