Xiaodi Hou

Xiaodi Hou is an autonomous-driving founder who currently leads Bot Auto, a Linear Capital angel-backed startup that in April 2025 ran what it claims was America's first fully driverless truck delivery . In a Linear Capital interview published May 2026, he described his core conviction as the near-certainty of autonomous trucking's success—unlike AI fields that depend on luck, he sees the problem as a sequential climb through safety, unit economics, and scalability . He also spoke of having just hired a veteran from the traditional trucking industry to handle commercial operations, acknowledging that "truck industry water runs deep" with unwritten rules outsiders miss . His earlier career included founding and exiting autonomous-driving ventures; the interview frames him as someone who has "stepped in almost every pit" in the sector and now prizes "true believers" over raw technical talent .