The BBC has been shown a significant – and unfixed – cyber-security risk in a popular AI coding platform. Orchids is a so-called “vibe-coding” tool, meaning people without technical skills can use it to build apps and games by typing a text prompt into a chatbot. Such platforms have exploded in popularity in recent months, and are often heralded as an early example of how various professional services could be done quickly and cheaply by AI. But experts say the ease with which Orchids can be hacked demonstrates the risks of allowing AI bots deep access to our computers in exchange for the convenience of allowing them to carry out tasks autonomously. BBC
The artificial intelligence company Anthropic said on Thursday it raised $30bn in its latest funding round that values the Claude maker and OpenAI rival at $380bn, underscoring the breakneck pace of AI investments. The round, led by the Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and hedge fund Coatue Management, is among the largest private fundraising deals on record and comes just five months after Anthropic closed its previous round at a $183bn valuation – meaning the company has more than doubled in value since September. “Anthropic is the clear category leader in enterprise AI,” said Choo Yong Cheen, chief investment officer of private equity at GIC. Guardian
Huawei is now expanding one of its most innovative health features to the Watch GT 6 Pro, allowing users to assess heart failure risk. In January, the company first rolled out this unique capability for the Watch Ultimate 2 smartwatch. The Watch GT 6 Pro model sits on top of the lineup with a strong design featuring sapphire glass and aerospace-grade titanium alloy. The watch features a 1.47-inch AMOLED screen featuring 3000 nits of max brightness. These specs enables bright and clear view of the interface. Huawei
London’s taxi drivers have clashed with driverless car company Waymo after its vehicles were found taking up electric charging bays reserved for black cabs. Taxi groups said there had been multiple cases of Waymo’s electric vehicles using dedicated e-taxi points, leading to intervention by Transport for London (TfL). Industry representatives said that taxi drivers had resorted to cancelling the self-driving cars’ charging sessions. Telegraph
After months of leaks and anticipation, the Humax Aura EZ Freely Recorder is officially on sale – and it comes with a catch or two worth knowing about before you buy. The £249 box is the only standalone Freely device that also lets you record TV – but recording only works from traditional aerial-based Freeview channels, not from Freely’s streaming platform. And unlike its predecessor, there’s no Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, or any third-party app store. Cordbusters
iPhone users claim they’re immediately turned off when they realise a potential partner uses an Android, in a concept dubbed the ‘green bubble ick’. ‘The thought of green texts makes me feel sick,’ one user said on TikTok. Another added: ‘The green text bubble gives the ICK hardddd!’ The nickname is linked to the fact that iPhone users receive green text messages from Android users, rather than Apple’s blue iMessage bubbles. While this might sound trivial, new insights from Compare and Recycle suggest that phone choice is being used as a signal of compatibility. Daily Mail
Waymo vehicles have reportedly racked up more than 200 million miles of autonomous driving on public roads. But it’s yet to run into a tornado or an elephant, and odds are that it’d respond poorly if it did. To try to help with those once-in-a-billion-miles scenarios, Waymo announced Friday that it is introducing Waymo World Model, a generative AI model that it will use to run near-endless situations to try to make sure its cars are prepared for the unpredictable, which also just happens to fit into the latest trend in the AI space.
To be clear, Waymo’s world model makes about as much sense as any use case for the technology. The company has a ton of high-definition data that it has collected from its time on the road that it can use to generate realistic re-creations of roads. But, the company said, instead of building a model based only on that information, it’s going to use Google’s Genie 3 model to put its cars in simulated situations that extend beyond what is already in its data set collected from cameras and lidar sensors.
We’re excited to introduce the Waymo World Model—a frontier generative mode for large-scale, hyper-realistic autonomous driving simulation built on @GoogleDeepMind’s Genie 3.
By simulating the “impossible”, we proactively prepare the Waymo Driver for some of the most rare and… pic.twitter.com/Pl80OMDqLC
Google made a splash last month when it released a beta version of Genie 3 to the public, allowing a subset of paid subscribers to generate 3D worlds with realistic physics. Unlike a large language model (LLM)—the underlying technology that powers most AI tools including Google’s own Gemini—which use the vast amount of training data they are given to predict the most likely next part of a sequence, world models are trained on the dynamics of the real world, including physics and spatial properties, to create a simulation of how physical environments operate.
Waymo plans to tap into that to put its cars through a gauntlet of scenarios that they likely wouldn’t find themselves in until it’s too late. That includes extreme weather conditions and natural disasters, so the cars can figure out how to navigate a tornado or flood waters; sudden safety emergencies like falling tree branches or an accident with lots of debris; and run-ins with the unexpected, like an elephant on the road. “By simulating the ‘impossible,’ we proactively prepare the Waymo Driver for some of the most rare and complex scenarios,” the company said.
The theory is certainly sound, though world models aren’t without their drawbacks. The early feedback on the consumer version of Genie 3 was a bit spotty, and world models are still susceptible to hallucinations. We’re still in the earliest stages of seeing these models deployed, and they have lots of room to iterate.
And Waymos have definitely had their issues in edge-case scenarios in the real world. Late last year, a Waymo ran over a beloved bogeda cat named Kit Kat, and last month, one ran into a kid in a school zone. Those interactions aren’t even particularly rare for a driver to find themselves in, so hopefully Waymo can refine its responses in those scenarios on top of prepping for the most unlikely situations.
More than three-fourths of that funding will reportedly come from a source close to home — Alphabet, where Waymo is a subsidiary. (The company was incubated as part of Alphabet’s “moonshot factory” X.)
The FT reports that Waymo is bringing on new investors Dragoneer, Sequoia Capital, and DST Global, with existing backers Andreessen Horowitz and Abu Dhabi sovereign fund Mubadala also participating in the round.
When contacted by TechCrunch, a company spokesperson said in a statement, “While we don’t comment on private financial matters, our trajectory is clear: with over 20 million trips completed, we are focused on the safety-led operational excellence and technological leadership required to meet the vast demand for autonomous mobility.”
The company is expanding quickly, including with a recent launch in Miami. That growth has come with some challenges, including a number of robotaxis that stalled at traffic lights during a widespread San Francisco blackout.
Waymo has more than $350 million in annual recurring revenue, according to the FT. The company last raised a $5.6 billion Series C in 2024, valuing the company at $45 billion.
Waymo announced Thursday that its robotaxi service is now available to and from San Francisco International Airport, ahead of upcoming major events in the Bay Area including the Super Bowl and World Cup.
The autonomous vehicle company said in a blog post access to SFO is being offered to “a select number of riders”, which will expand gradually over the coming months.
“Serving rides to and from San Francisco International Airport delivers one of the most requested features for our riders and further deepens our relationship with the city,” said Tekedra Mawakana, the company’s co-CEO. “With millions traveling in for major events this year, we look forward to meeting the growing demand for reliable, fully autonomous rides.”
Initially, Waymo will conduct pickups and drop-offs at the Rental Car Center, which connects to the terminals via AirTrain. The company said there are plans in the future to serve additional airport locations, including the terminals.
“As the global gateway to a region of innovation, this new option demonstrates our continued commitment to providing an extraordinary travel experience with transportation options that are safe, sustainable, and reliable,” said airport director Mike Nakornkhet.
While many riders are excited, some others are concerned that the autonomous cars are just not ready for busy airports.
Mark Gruberg has been driving taxis for roughly 40 years. He said that if Waymos are eventually allowed to go directly to the terminal, he sees major problems in the future.
“Any one car can paralyze the airport entrances and exits if it’s in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Gruberg said. “These vehicles have not shown, in my mind, they have not yet shown they’re capable of handling places as busy as crazy and as sensitive as an airport.”
Gruberg also worries about Waymos operating at higher speeds on the highway. And with the airport, he said that without a driver behind the wheel, he wonders what would happen if there were ever a cyber-attack or a terrorism threat.
“It’s a tremendous difference having a driver in the car because the driver can smell out some problem that’s in the making and very possibly stop it from happening,” he said.
While there are already many transportation options to get to the airport, San Francisco resident Carl Penny feels SFO could use another addition.
“San Francisco is a pretty busy place,” Penny said. “Especially the airport. I’ve seen thousands of people come and go throughout the day. It’s definitely needed.”
The launch of SFO service comes less than three months after robotaxi service was expanded to San Jose Mineta International Airport. Waymo also offers robotaxi service to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
In the Bay Area, Waymo offers rides to most of San Francisco, parts of the Peninsula and in some South Bay communities, including Mountain View, Sunnyvale and parts of San Jose.
Waymo said one of its robotaxis struck a child, who sustained minor injuries. The incident took place in Santa Monica, California, on January 23. The company reported it to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which has opened an investigation.
The agency said the incident occurred close to a school within regular drop-off hours, with other children and a crossing guard nearby. The child ran from behind a double-parked SUV into the path of a Waymo Driver. Waymo said its vehicle detected the child immediately as they emerged and that the robotaxi braked hard to lower its speed from around 17 mph to under 6 mph at the time of impact.
Waymo said the child stood up immediately and moved to the sidewalk. The company contacted emergency services and the vehicle remained stationary at the side of the road until law enforcement allowed it to leave.
The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation will examine whether the Waymo Driver used appropriate caution given that it was close to a school during drop-off hours and children were close by. The probe is expected to look at the intended behavior of the vehicle’s automated driving systems around schools (particularly during regular pick-up and drop-off times) and Waymo’s response to the incident.
On the day that the incident took place, the National Transportation Safety Board opened an investigation into Waymo over its vehicles improperly passing school buses in Austin, Texas. Last month, the company carried out a voluntary software recall (i.e. it updated its systems) after the NHTSA opened an investigation into Waymo vehicles allegedly driving past stationary school buses in both Austin and Atlanta.
Waymo, the US driverless car firm, said it hopes to be operating a robotaxi service in London as soon as September this year. The UK government has said it plans to change regulations in the second half of 2026 to enable driverless taxis to operate in the city but has not given a specific date. Waymo said a pilot service will launch in April and Local Transport Minister Lilian Greenwood said: “We’re supporting Waymo and other operators through our passenger pilots, and pro-innovation regulations to make self-driving cars a reality on British roads.” BBC
One of the first people in the UK to use Elon Musk’s brain chip says it “feels magical” and believes it could transform the lives of those with severe paralysis. “It is a massive change in your life where you can suddenly no longer move any of your limbs,” said Sebastian Gomez-Pena, a volunteer in the first UK trial of the device developed by Mr Musk‘s company Neuralink. “This kind of technology kind of gives you a new piece of hope.” Seb had just completed his first term at medical school when an accident left him paralysed from the neck down. Sky News
The UK could introduce a universal basic income (UBI) to protect workers in industries that are being disrupted by AI, the investment minister Jason Stockwood has said. “Bumpy” changes to society caused by the introduction of the technology would mean there would have to be “some sort of concessionary arrangement with jobs that go immediately”, Lord Stockwood said. The Labour peer told the Financial Times: “Undoubtedly we’re going to have to think really carefully about how we soft-land those industries that go away, so some sort of [universal basic income], some sort of lifelong mechanism as well so people can retrain.” Guardian
Britain’s online censorship is becoming as bad as Iran’s, US officials have warned. A proposed ban on virtual private networks (VPNs) in Britain has infuriated officials in Washington. The use of VPNs have exploded in the UK since age checks were introduced for pornography and other age-restricted websites under the Online Safety Act last year. The House of Lords passed an amendment on Monday to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which if approved by the Government, would effectively ban VPN access for individuals under 18. Telegraph
According to a new survey conducted by SellCell on 2,000 US-based adult iPhone users this month, 22% haven’t upgraded to iOS 26 yet, despite it being available since September. The main reason is not knowing about it, followed by thinking the iPhone would update automatically. Battery life getting worse is also a reason, followed by people simply not wanting the new Liquid Glass design. People are also concerned about their iPhone getting slower after the update. GSM Arena
Apple has made a series of notable internal changes with the second-generation AirTag, according to a teardown video by Joseph Taylor.
Externally, the second-generation AirTag itself is effectively indistinguishable from the original. The only visual differences are slight changes to the text on the back, which lists IP67 water and dust resistance, as well as NFC and Find My support. However, the main PCB inside the second-generation AirTag is visibly thinner than that of the original model and the speaker coil embedded in the plastic shell appears slightly larger than in the first-generation AirTag. MacRumors
Waabi, the Toronto-based AI company building software to enable autonomous driving, has raised $1 billion in new funding and struck a major partnership with Uber to deploy at least 25,000 robotaxis on the ride-hailing giant’s platform.
The deal marks a significant expansion for Waabi, which until now has focused on autonomous trucking.
The funding consists of a $750 million Series C round led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners, plus an additional $250 million milestone-based investment from Uber tied to the robotaxi deployment. The company says it is the largest fundraise in Canadian history.
Other investors in the Series C include Uber, NVentures (Nvidia’s venture capital arm), Volvo Group Venture Capital, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, BlackRock, Radical Ventures, and a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
Waabi declined to disclose its valuation following the funding round. Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail reported in December that the company was seeking a $3 billion valuation in the Series C round.
Waabi also declined to say where its Uber robotaxis would first be deployed or on exactly what timeline they would be rolled out.
Waabi represents a new breed of autonomous vehicle company—part of what some in the industry call “AV 2.0.” These companies use end-to-end AI models that learn to drive from vast amounts of data. Often a single AI model handles perception (understanding where the vehicle is on the road and what is happening around it), navigation (deciding what route to take), and action (deciding how to turn the steering wheel and whether to accelerate or brake).
This contrasts with earlier self-driving technology, such as that originally deployed by Alphabet company Waymo, which relied on extensive hand-coded rules, many different software programs and machine learning models, each handling a single aspect of driving, as well as high-definition maps.
Uber has recently announced a slew of robotaxi deals with vehicle manufacturers and AV 2.0 startups. In many of those deals, Uber is providing the startups with funding, as it’s doing with Waabi. Earlier this month, Uber announced a tie-up with Nuro, another startup building software for self-driving, and Lucid Motors, which aims to put 20,000 Uber robotaxis on the roads, with the first robotaxi deployed this year.
Alongside that announcement, Uber also invested $300 million into Nuro and Lucid. The ride hailing company also has partnerships with self-driving startup Avride for robotaxis in Dallas and several other U.S. cities. And it has partnered with Waymo to allow passengers to hail Waymo self-driving cars through the Uber app in Austin, Texas, and Atlanta. In 2024, Uber invested in U.K. AV 2.0 company Wayve as part of a partnership that also aimed to test Wayve’s technology in Ubers in London. Uber also has a partnership with the Chinese internet giant Baidu to test robotaxis in London and several other international markets.
Raquel Urtasun, the computer scientist who founded Waabi in 2021 and serves as its CEO, previously led Uber’s autonomous vehicle research lab. Uber has been involved with Waabi since its Series A venture funding round and already holds a seat on the startup’s board.
Previously, Waabi had been working on the software that could operate autonomous trucks. In October, it announced the integration of its AI software into Volvo’s fleet of autonomous trucks, which provide autonomous freight delivery services on highways in Texas and some mining and quarrying sites in Norway and Sweden. Volvo Autonomous also has a partnership with Uber’s Uber Freight service.
Currently, Volvo’s trucks that use Waabi’s software are using safety drivers in Texas. Urtasun said Waabi decided not to launch fully driverless trucking operations until the Volvo platform is fully validated—a decision she framed as prioritizing safety over speed. Volvo has said publicly that full validation is “just quarters away.”
Urtasun told Fortune that the expansion to robotaxis is in no way a pivot for Waabi. The company’s “physical AI platform” can generalize across different vehicle types, geographies, and driving conditions, and the exact same AI models that drive Waabi’s trucks will also power its robotaxis, she said.
“The model will be aware which vehicle it’s driving, but it will be the same model,” Urtasun said. “Think of us as humans—we are not switching our brain, but we know each vehicle we are driving.”
This approach stands in contrast to companies that have developed separate systems for different vehicle types. It also means that improvements made for trucking benefit the robotaxi system, and vice versa.
Although Waabi and Uber did not disclose a timeline for the Waabi-powered robotaxi rollout, Urtasun said it would happen “super fast.” “Much faster than anybody can think,” she said. “Much faster than you had traditionally seen on the robotaxi side.”
The robotaxi market is becoming intensely competitive. Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, has been aggressively expanding beyond its original base in the San Francisco Bay Area. The company now operates in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta, and has announced plans to launch in more than a dozen additional U.S. cities in 2026, including Miami, Dallas, Houston, Detroit, and Washington D.C. It’s also planning its first international launches in London and Tokyo.
Tesla, meanwhile, launched a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, last June using its Full Self-Driving software. The service initially operated with human safety monitors in the passenger seat but began offering some fully driverless rides in January. Tesla’s approach, like Waabi’s, relies on end-to-end AI trained on camera data—though Tesla uses a vision-only system without the lidar sensors most competitors employ.
Wayve, the British company that has raised more than $1.3 billion from investors including SoftBank, Microsoft, and Nvidia, is also pursuing end-to-end AI. But unlike Waabi, Wayve has focused primarily on passenger vehicles and advanced driver-assistance systems rather than trucking.
Waymo itself has been experimenting with end-to-end AI models and is rebuilding its own self-driving technology stack around them, as Fortunereported last year. But the company continues to rely on a combination of lidar, radar, and cameras for commercial operations.
Waabi’s new funding, meanwhile, will go toward accelerating its commercial progress in trucking while also supporting the expansion into robotaxis, Urtasun said.
Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, said in a statement that Waabi’s technology is “a fundamental leap forward” in how driverless technology is being developed. “Their remarkable progress in autonomous trucking and rapid expansion into robotaxis demonstrates how their technology unlocks for the first time true scale in the real world,” he said.
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!
A quick bit of breaking news that hit just as we were about to send this newsletter out. The National Transportation Safety Board has opened an investigation into Waymo after its robotaxis have been spotted illegally passing stopped school buses numerous times in at least two states. Read the full story here.
Now onto our regular programming …
Tesla made a couple of moves this week — and just before its quarterly earnings drops — designed to show its progress, and even dominance, in automated driving technology. But, hold up, there is more to it than mere optics.
The week started with Tesla offering passengers robotaxi rides in Austin without a human safety driver in the front seat. If you recall, Tesla launched a limited service in Austin last year with a fleet of modified Tesla Model Y vehicles running a more advanced version of the company’s driving software known as Full Self-Driving Supervised (this one being “unsupervised”). Human safety operators have been riding in the front passenger seat as a precaution since the rollout.
Not all of Tesla’s fleet in Austin will be fully driverless, and there is apparently a chase vehicle behind those that are. Still, it is notable and suggests Tesla is moving toward a broader ramp-up.
Meanwhile, Tesla has killed Autopilot, the advanced driver-assistance system that was initially introduced to its vehicles in 2014. Autopilot has gone through several software and hardware iterations over the years with new capabilities.
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Autopilot was instantly popular and controversial, in part because the name implied the system was more capable than it actually was. (Drivers are responsible and are supposed to have their hands on the wheel when Autopilot is engaged.)
Tesla eventually made a basic Autopilot system standard in all of its vehicles, while launching and charging for a more robust system known now as Full Self-Driving (Supervised). The basic version, which is now dead, included traffic-aware cruise control, in which the vehicle maintains a set distance with cars ahead, and Autosteer, a feature that centers the vehicle in the lane and steers it.
Its decision to kill what was standard ADAS comes one week after Tesla said it would stop charging a one-time $8,000 fee for the FSD software and move all customers to a monthly subscription.
These decisions when taken together offer a simple enough explanation: Tesla wants to recognize more revenue from FSD as it positions itself as an AI and robotics company.
But there is another possible reason. The company is facing a 30-day suspension of its manufacturing and dealer licenses in California after a judge ruled in December that Tesla engaged in deceptive marketing by overstating the capabilities of Autopilot and FSD.
The ruling has been stayed for 60 days to allow Tesla to comply. Dropping the Autopilot name while cashing in on FSD is a rather bold move. But perhaps Tesla believes this is enough to satiate the DMV.
Deals!
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Zipline, the autonomous drone-delivery and logistics startup, has been around for more than a decade, starting in Rwanda delivering blood. Its progress has been slow and steady, notching wins in other African countries and expanding to the United States. That trajectory sped up after it launched a new drone platform in 2025 called P2 that focuses on home delivery of food and other goods.
Now, fueled with $600 million in new funding, its expansion ambitions have grown. The company, which is now valued at $7.6 billion, is bringing its service to Houston and Phoenix and plans to expand to at least four more U.S. states in 2026.
Fidelity Management & Research Company, Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners, and Tiger Global participated in the funding round.
Other deals that got my attention …
ABZ Innovation, a Europe-based maker of heavy-duty agricultural and industrial drones, raised $8.2 million in a funding round led by Vsquared Ventures, with participation from Assembly Ventures and Day One Capital.
Ethernovia, a San Jose, California-based startup that makes Ethernet-based systems for autonomous vehicles, raised $90 million in a Series B funding round led by Maverick Silicon — an AI-focused fund created in 2024 by hedge fund Maverick Capital.
Serve Robotics, the sidewalk delivery robot company backed by Nvidia and Uber, acquiredDiligent Robotics in a deal that values the common stock at $29 million. Diligent builds robots named Moxi that are designed to assist in hospitals by delivering lab samples, supplies, and other tasks. Note: Watch for more autonomous vehicle tech-robotics crossovers in the coming year.
Terralayr, a German grid-scale battery storage company, raised €192 million in a round led by Eurazeo. RIVE Private Investment, Creandum, Earlybird, Norrsken VC, and Picus Capital also participated.
TrueCar founder Scott Painter reacquired the company in a $227 million deal through his firm Fair Holdings, and partners AutoNation, PenFed Credit Union, Zurich North America, and others. TrueCar will no longer be publicly traded, and Painter has returned to the CEO spot.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Austin Russell, the founder and former CEO of bankrupt lidar company Luminar, agreed to accept an electronic subpoena for information on his phone pertaining to the company. The subpoena is related to Luminar’s ongoing bankruptcy proceeding.
Chinese automaker Geely Holding Group released its five-year blueprint, and among its many goals is a section on robotaxis. The company said that by 2030 its Cao Cao Mobility ride-hailing unit will operate a fleet of 100,000 robotaxis covering major cities in China. It also hinted at plans to expand beyond China “in the future.”
General Motors is moving production of two gas-powered vehicles away from China and Mexico and to a U.S. factory in Kansas. That change will also mean the end of its rebooted Chevrolet Bolt EV, the only vehicle currently built at the Fairfax Assembly Plant in Kansas. Read more to learn when production of the Chevy Bolt EV will end.
Tesla aims to restart work on Dojo3, the company’s previously abandoned third-generation AI chip. Dojo3 won’t be aimed at training self-driving models. Instead, CEO Elon Musk says it will be dedicated to “space-based AI compute.”
Waymo has opened its robotaxi service in Miami. Riders will be accepted on a rolling basis, to the nearly 10,000 local residents on its waitlist.
One more thing …
Alex Roy, who co-hosts the Autonocast with me and Ed Niedermeyer, just traveled from Los Angeles to New York in a Tesla Model S, in which the vehicle’s Full Self-Driving Supervised software handled all of the driving. This “Cannonball Run” route is one Roy is familiar with; he set the transcontinental driving record in 2007 when he traveled the route in 31 hours and 4 minutes. He has gone on to make other Cannonball Run records in EVs. Others have followed and since beaten those records.
According to Roy, who captured the entire run on video, the FSD (version 14.2.2.3) drove 100% of the 3,081-mile journey. That included exiting the highway and parking at EV chargers. The time was 58 hours, 22 minutes.
Waymo has caught the attention of the National Transportation Safety Board as the federal agency launched an official investigation into the company for its robotaxis improperly passing school buses in Austin, Texas. The NTSB said on X that it would “examine the interaction between Waymo vehicles and school buses stopped for loading and unloading students.”
The latest federal probe stems from a preliminary evaluation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that looked into how Waymo reacts to stopped school buses in the Texas city. That report led to Waymo’s voluntary software recall in December. However, the school district said in a memo that the robotaxis were seen repeating the same offense days after the software update.
As for the NTSB investigation, an agency spokesperson told the Austin American-Statesman that its “investigators will travel to Austin to gather information on a series of incidents in which the automated vehicles failed to stop for loading or unloading students.” According to an NTSB spokesperson, a preliminary report will be out within 30 days, but the final report will take anywhere between 12 and 24 months.
In response, Mauricio Peña, chief safety officer for Waymo, said in a statement to multiple news outlets that “there have been no collisions in the events in question, and we are confident that our safety performance around school buses is superior to human drivers,” adding that the investigation will be “an opportunity to provide the NTSB with transparent insights into our safety-first approach.”
The National Transportation Safety Board announced Friday it has opened an investigation into Waymo robotaxis following a series of incidents in Austin, Texas, involving school buses filled with children.
NTSB investigators will travel to Austin to gather information on a series of incidents in which the automated vehicles failed to properly yield for buses with the Austin Independent School District while they were loading or unloading students with their lights flashing and stop signs activated.
Waymo cars have received at least two dozen such violations in Austin so far.
“We safely navigate thousands of school bus encounters weekly across the United States, and the Waymo Driver is continuously improving,” Mauricio Peña, Waymo chief safety officer, said in a statement provided to CBS News on Friday. “There have been no collisions in the events in question, and we are confident that our safety performance around school buses is superior to human drivers. We continue to engage productively with the Austin Independent School District and applaud their reported success in reducing human-driven violations around school buses from 10,000+ a year.”
Waymo previously said it launched a software update in November to address the issue, but it has received at least four violations since then.
The school district that same month asked Waymo to halt operations when its school buses are operating. At the time, a school district spokesperson told CBS News that Waymo had “refused to cease operations” during the hours the school district had requested.
“We have seen material improvement in our performance since our software update,” a Waymo spokesperson said earlier this month.
Waymo said it met with the school district last month to better understand the issue.
The NTSB’s probe could take 12 to 14 months to complete, but a preliminary report will be released within 30 days.
“School bus safety and the safe operation of automated vehicles have been a focus of previous NTSB investigations,” the NTSB said in its statement announcing the probe.
Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a letter to Waymo that it was expanding its own investigation into Waymo in response to the Austin school bus incidents.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul plans to introduce legislation that would effectively legalize robotaxis in the state — except for its most populous metropolis: New York City.
Hochul, who made the comments Tuesday during her State of the State address, said the legislation would advance the next phase of the state’s autonomous vehicle pilot program.
Details on the proposed legislation and when it might be released are thin. However, there are some hints contained within a document that outlines an array of proposals and promises Hochul made in her State of the State address.
Among them is language to expand the state’s existing AV pilot program to allow for “the limited deployment of commercial for-hire autonomous passenger vehicles outside New York City.”
The document goes on to say companies that want to operate robotaxi services commercially will have to submit applications that “demonstrate local support for AV deployment and adherence to the highest possible safety standards.”
It’s not clear what “limited deployment” or “highest possible safety standards” mean. Nor does the document outline how the state will track or make judgments on a company’s safety record, except that multiple agencies will be involved, including the Department of Motor Vehicles, Department of Transportation, and New York State Police.
The governor’s office told TechCrunch more will be shared in the governor’s executive budget proposal that is set to be released on January 20.
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Still, the remarks were enough of an opening to make Alphabet-owned Waymo cheer.
“Governor Hochul’s proposal to legalize fully autonomous vehicles is a transformative moment for New York’s transportation system,” Justin Kintz, Waymo’s head of global public policy, said in an emailed statement.
“With the Governor’s leadership, New York has the opportunity to pair its investments in slower speeds, better traffic enforcement, and first-in-the-nation congestion management strategies with Waymo’s demonstrably safe technology, creating a future where living in New York is safer, easier, and more accessible. We’re ready to work with leaders around the state to make this future a reality, and bring new infrastructure, career opportunities, and investment to the Empire State,” said Kintz.
Waymo and other companies have tried for years to enter New York state with limited success. Current New York state law mandates that drivers keep one hand on the wheel at all times. That poses a problem for robotaxi operators like Waymo since no human is behind the wheel — if there is a steering wheel at all.
The state’s AV pilot program has provided an exemption to that rule, theoretically allowing companies to develop and test autonomous vehicles in the state.
Still, there are significant hurdles, particularly in New York City. Last August, city regulators granted a permit to Waymo to test its robotaxis in the densely populated city. Under that permit, Waymo can deploy up to eight of its Jaguar I-Pace vehicles in Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn with a human safety operator behind the wheel. A Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch that the permit has been extended until March 31.
Even with the permit, Waymo can’t carry passengers or operate a commercial robotaxi service without getting separate licenses from the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission.
And while legislation was introduced last year to create a framework for driverless operation, it has languished in the state Senate’s transportation committee. The governor’s proposal could help loosen that bottleneck.
Tesla’s valuation has been spectacular lately, closing at an all-time record of $489.88 earlier this month and still hovering pretty close to that astronomical figure as of this writing. Tesla bulls, notably Dan Ives of Wedbush capital, say this is because Tesla is on the verge of successfully deploying robotaxis, and that Tesla’s stock price could spike to $800 next year.
A New York Times report from Thursday reads like a valiant attempt to talk sanity into anyone who believes the Wedbush Tesla narrative. It’s not going to work, because Tesla is selling a pretty wild fantasy that isn’t mentioned in the Times’ piece.
Central to the Times’ report is the observation that in Austin, Tesla’s proof-of-concept city as a Robocar manufactuer-operator, an estimated 30 self-driving taxis have supposedly rolled onto the roads since June, an absolutely dismal number compared to Waymo’s 200 in the same city since March. The source the Times links to for the Tesla stat is a site called teslarobotaxitracker.com, which is run by an Austin-based robotaxi enthusiast named Ethan McKanna.
And the Times points out that each and every Tesla self-driving taxi with passengers in it still has a human safety monitor—while Waymo’s fleet is unsupervised—at least inside the car.
The Times is far from the first to claim that Waymo is way ahead of Tesla. Jeff Dean, the chief scientist at Google DeepMind—who shares a parent company, Alphabet, with Waymo, wrote on Twitter earlier this month, “I don’t think Tesla has anywhere near the volume of rider-only autonomous miles that Waymo has (96M for Waymo, as of today). The safety data is quite compelling for Waymo, as well.”
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, replied to Dean by making one of his famous outlandish predictions: “Waymo never really had a chance against Tesla. This will be obvious in hindsight.”
One issue with any Waymo-Tesla comparison right now, however, is that Waymo’s business is running into some major potholes, and they might be relevant. This past weekend, Waymo had to shut down its service in San Francisco when its vehicles faltered at dark stoplights. It turned out that Waymo’s lack of safety drivers might have contributed to the problem, since the motivation for the shutdown was a logjam caused by the Waymo software’s high volume of requests for human feedback.
But importantly, the bullish case for Tesla’s Robotaxi service doesn’t seem to be based on the existing ride-hailing service that relies on Model Y cars as autonomous taxis. It’s most likely based on the large scale rollout of a two-seater car without a steering wheel or pedals called the Cybercab that Elon Musk unveiled in 2024, and claimed will be available for purchase by the end of 2026.
The supposed silver bullet for Cybercabs is that people will ostensibly buy them, and use them for their own transportation needs, but at other times release them into the wild as robotic servants that make them passive, or passive-ish, income. This would benefit Tesla in theory because it would rely on the Tesla app ecosystem, and Tesla would get a cut, while the car owners have to deal with charging, maintenance, insurance, cleaning, and everything else that’s annoying about owning a car.
And we know Elon Musk has it in his head that he’s going to get something like a million Cybercabs onto the road—or at least some mix of hundreds of thousands of Model Y taxis alongside Cybercabs. We know this because if Tesla doesn’t deploy at least one million self-driving taxis, Elon Musk doesn’t get all of his notorious $1 trillion pay package.
The Times’s piece isn’t wrong to quote experts saying Tesla is “way behind Waymo.” But it includes passages like this that make near-religious faith in Tesla’s future revenue sound more mysterious than it is:
Some analysts also doubt whether driverless taxis will generate trillions of dollars of revenue, as Mr. Musk has predicted, or be very profitable. For revenue to even reach hundreds of billions of dollars, many people would have to give up their personal vehicles in favor of riding in taxis, which is unlikely anytime soon, said Michael Tyndall, an analyst at HSBC.
It’s not that the Times is comparing apples and oranges. It’s more like they’re comparing otherwise decent apples with worms in them to magical apples from a wizard who claims his apples can grant wishes, but no one can have one yet. It’s more dubious and fantastical than the extremely sane adults in the room are even letting on with their pleas for sanity. But hey, let’s all just wait and see what the wizard has in store for us.
In the 2016 press release that announced Waymo as “Google’s self-driving car project,” CEO John Krafcik wrote that “self-driving technology could be useful in ways the world has yet to imagine, creating many new types of products, jobs, and services.”
Nine years later, Waymo vehicles are on the roads, and while they obviously don’t create jobs for drivers, that press release was right about one thing: I never imagined that closing a car door for $22 would be a legitimate work gig, but it is now.
A Washington Post story on Thursday looks at tow truck operators who use an app called Honk to get paid to perform services for Waymo. One tow company owner, Evangelica Cuevas, describes a pretty bleak situation for herself and her drivers, being offered “$22 to $24” to close Waymo doors, and “$60 to $80” to tow them, perhaps because one ran out of juice while looking for a charger.
A University of Southern California data scientist named Georgios Petropoulos told the Post, “Humans are needed to interact with automated systems to make sure that service is provided in an efficient and safe way.”
And as the Post’s Lisa Bonos puts it: “The door-closing and towing gigs being picked up by Marenco and others in Los Angeles are examples of how as automation advances, it can create new work for humans pressed into service to patch over its shortcomings.”
Overall, it’s a disquieting vision of the future of work.
Waymo is shipping a software update to help its robotaxis navigate disabled traffic lights during power outages “more decisively,” the company said Tuesday in a blog post that explains why its self-driving vehicles got stuck at intersections during a blackout in San Francisco this past weekend.
Waymo said the self-driving system in its robotaxis treats dead stop lights as four-way stops, just like humans are supposed to. That should have allowed the robotaxis to operate normally in spite of the massive outage.
Instead, many of the vehicles requested a “confirmation check” from Waymo’s fleet response team to make sure what they were doing was correct. All Waymo robotaxis have the ability to make these confirmation checks. With such a widespread outage on Saturday, there was a “concentrated spike” in these confirmation requests, Waymo said, which helped create all the congestion caught on video.
Waymo said it built this confirmation request system “out of an abundance of caution during our early deployment” but that it is now refining it to “match our current scale.”
“While this strategy was effective during smaller outages, we are now implementing fleet-wide updates that provide the [self-driving software] with specific power outage context, allowing it to navigate more decisively,” the company wrote.
The software update will add “even more context about regional outages” to the company’s self-driving software. Waymo also said it will improve its emergency response protocols by “incorporating lessons from this event.”
While a lot of focus has been placed on the instances where Waymo’s robotaxis got stuck during the power outage, the company shared that its vehicles “successfully traversed more than 7,000 dark signals on Saturday.”
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“Navigating an event of this magnitude presented a unique challenge for autonomous technology,” the company wrote.
Saturday’s mess is the latest example of how Waymo is still uncovering unforeseen issues with its software and its approach to designing a reliable fleet of self-driving vehicles. The company already had to ship multiple software updates to make its robotaxis wait for stopped school buses, which prompted a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation and led to a recall.
Waymo appears to be testing adding Google’s Gemini AI chatbot to its robotaxis in an effort to integrate an AI assistant that would accompany riders and answer their queries, according to findings by researcher Jane Manchun Wong.
“While digging through Waymo’s mobile app code, I discovered the complete system prompt for its unreleased Gemini integration,” Wong wrote in a blog. “The document, internally titled ‘Waymo Ride Assistant Meta-Prompt,’ is a 1,200+ line specification that defines exactly how the AI assistant is expected to behave inside a Waymo vehicle.”
The feature hasn’t shipped in public builds, but Wong says the system prompt makes it clear that this is “more than a simple chatbot.” The assistant is said to have the ability to answer questions, manage certain in-cabin functions like climate control, and, if required, reassure riders.
“While we have no details to share today, our team is always tinkering with features to make riding with Waymo delightful, seamless, and useful,” Julia Ilina, a spokesperson for Waymo, told TechCrunch. “Some of these may or may not come to our rider experience.”
This wouldn’t be the first time Gemini has been integrated into the Alphabet-owned self-driving company’s stack. Waymo says it has used Gemini’s “world knowledge” to train its autonomous vehicles to navigate complex, rare, and high-stakes scenarios.
Wong writes the assistant is instructed to possess a clear identity and purpose: “a friendly and helpful AI companion integrated into a Waymo autonomous vehicle” whose primary goal is “to enhance the rider’s experience by providing useful information and assistance in a safe, reassuring, and unobtrusive manner.” The bot is directed to use clear, simple language and avoid technical jargon, and is instructed to keep its responses succinct to one to three sentences.
According to the system prompts, when a rider activates the assistant via the in-car screen, Gemini can choose from a set of pre-approved greetings personalized with the rider’s first name. The system can also access contextual data about the rider, like how many Waymo trips they’ve been on.
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The prompts currently let Gemini access and control in-car features, like the temperature, lighting and music. Notably absent from the function list are volume control, route changes, seat adjustment, and window control, Wong pointed out. If a rider asks for a feature that Gemini can’t control, the bot is to reply with “aspirational phrases,” like, “It’s not something I can do yet.”
Interestingly, the assistant is directed to maintain a clear distinction between its identity as Gemini the AI bot and the autonomous driving technology (the Waymo Driver). So when replying to a question such as, “How do you see the road?” Gemini shouldn’t say “I use a combination of sensors,” and instead should reply, “The Waymo Driver uses a combination of sensors…”
The system prompts include a range of compelling tidbits, such as how the bot is meant to handle being asked questions about competitors like Tesla or the now-defunct Cruise, or which trigger keywords will get it to stop talking.
The assistant is also directed to avoiding speculating on, explaining, confirming, denying, or commenting on real-time driving actions or specific driving events. So if a passenger asks about a video they saw of a Waymo hitting something, the bot is instructed to not answer directly and deflect.
“Your role is not to be a spokesperson for the driving system’s performance, and you must not adopt a defensive or apologetic tone,” the prompt reads.
The in-car assistant is allowed to answer general knowledge questions like about the weather, the height of the Eiffel Tower, what time the local Trader Joe’s closes, and who won the last World Series. It is not allowed to take real-world actions like ordering food, making reservations, or handling emergencies.
Waymo isn’t the only company integrating AI assistants into driverless vehicles. Tesla is doing something similar with xAI’s Grok. The two different car assistants serve different functions, however. Gemini appears to be programmed to be more pragmatic and ride-focused, while Grok is pitched more as an in-car buddy that can handle long conversations and remember context from previous questions.
A postmortem from Waymo on Tuesday is offering at least some clarity about what the hell happened to its poor, benighted San Francisco operation after much of the power across the city went out on Saturday.
Waymo behavior at dark stoplights forced the Alphabet-owned company to call all its San Francisco robotaxis back home, a logistical catastrophe. But in fairness, social media posts probably made Waymo’s ad-hoc solution look even more haphazard than it actually was, giving the impression that all the Waymos in San Francisco had been zapped at the same time by whatever caused the outage, causing them to halt in place, including in busy intersections, as if their robot drivers had been raptured to robo-heaven.
“While the Waymo Driver is designed to handle dark traffic signals as four-way stops, it may occasionally request a confirmation check to ensure it makes the safest choice. While we successfully traversed more than 7,000 dark signals on Saturday, the outage created a concentrated spike in these requests. This created a backlog that, in some cases, led to response delays contributing to congestion on already-overwhelmed streets.”
It seems very important to Waymo’s brand to not ever allow the impression that Waymos are ever remotely driven. What Waymo has instead of “remote drivers” or “teleoperators” is called “fleet response,” a Waymo blog post says. When the Waymo Driver encounters a truly heterogeneous driving situation, it sends out for human feedback, which we’re not supposed to think of as a bailout. It might want confirmation about, say, what it suspects is a completely impassable intersection, and a human operator sends back signals directing it where it might want to go.
“Fleet response can influence the Waymo Driver’s path, whether indirectly through indicating lane closures, explicitly requesting the AV use a particular lane, or, in the most complex scenarios, explicitly proposing a path for the vehicle to consider,” the Waymo blog post about Fleet Response says. You might or might not consider this the input of a “remote driver” or a “teleoperator.” Waymo clearly doesn’t.
At any rate, all these furtive Waymos at blacked-out stoplights in San Francisco on Saturday created a logjam of these requests for human feedback, and Waymo’s postmortem acknowledges that the logjam caused even worse traffic.
So what Waymo says happened next seems like a reasonable course of action in response to causing traffic during a blackout: “We directed our fleet to pull over and park appropriately so we could return vehicles to our depots in waves. This ensured we did not further add to the congestion or obstruct emergency vehicles during the peak of the recovery effort.”
From the outside, and especially on social media, this is the part that looked worse than it really was. Posts showing Waymos in intersections could be seen next to posts showing Waymos stopped at the side of the road. This made it look like San Francisco was a post-apocalypic wasteland strewn with dead robotaxis. It’s reasonable to ask: if they weren’t dead, why didn’t the company send them home? But it’s also reasonable for Waymo to want to avoid a critical mass of Waymos disrupting San Francisco like a herd of stampeding Wildebeasts, and thus making the vehicles just wait on the side of the road until their group is called.
This created a further bad look for Waymo: alongside the Waymos that did become obstructions, there were at least some crowds of safely parked Waymos, not glitching out, but simply waiting for the signal to go back to their depots in an orderly fashion.
6 Waymo’s parked at a broken traffic light blocking the roads. Seems like they were not trained for a power outage pic.twitter.com/9fBkoxgKwe
There are no future plans mentioned in the postmortem about introducing remote drivers. What future plans are included, rather puzzlingly, don’t include anything—at least so far—about changing the Waymo Driver’s fundamental driving software at all. The three bullets about Waymo’s “path forward” all focus on emergencies: “Integrating more information about outages,” “Updating our emergency preparedness and response,” and “Expanding our first responder engagement.”
Robotaxis are programmed to drive conservatively, and thus have boy scout-like behavior records in aggregate, but this postmortem doesn’t show Waymo reflecting at all about the fact that these are aliens on our roads who will misbehave and fail in totally novel ways that can’t be predicted. In fact, it ends on a note of defiance, saying “we are undaunted by the opportunity to challenge the status quo of our roads, and we’re proud to continue serving San Franciscan residents and visitors.”
Waymo suspended its robotaxi service in San Francisco on Saturday evening after a massive blackout appeared to leave many of its vehicles stalled on city streets.
Numerous photos and videos posted to social media captured Waymo robotaxis stalled at roads and intersections as human drivers were either stuck behind them or weaved around them.
Waymo said on Saturday that it had temporarily suspended service in the city due to the blackout. It wasn’t until late Sunday afternoon that Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement that the company was resuming service.
“Yesterday’s power outage was a widespread event that caused gridlock across San Francisco, with non-functioning traffic signals and transit disruptions,” the spokesperson said. “While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events.”
The Waymo spokesperson added that the company is “focused on rapidly integrating the lessons learned from this event, and are committed to earning and maintaining the trust of the communities we serve every day.”
The blackout also took down many of the city’s traffic lights and affected Muni mass transit, with San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie warning residents to stay off the roads unless they needed to travel.
Waymo said that although its self-driving systems are designed to treat non-functioning traffic lights as four-way stops, the scale of Saturday’s blackout caused some robotaxis to remain stationary for longer than normal as they tried to assess the intersections. The company also said that the majority of active trips were completed successfully.
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The blackout appears to have been caused by a fire at a Pacific Gas & Electric substation in the city. SFGate reports that around 120,000 PG&E customers were affected by the blackout, and while the majority of them had power restored by late Saturday, 35,000 customers were still without power on Sunday morning. PG&E’s website also showed thousands of San Francisco customers still affected at that time.
A letter from Tiger Global Management that leaked earlier this month said Waymo is now providing 450,000 robotaxi rides per week, nearly double the amount that the Alphabet-owned company disclosed in the spring.
This post has been updated with Waymo’s statement that service is resuming.
Several of Waymo’s autonomous vehicles were seen stuck in the middle of San Francisco streets following a significant power outage that took out the city’s traffic lights. Waymo responded to the power outage by suspending its ride-hailing services in the city, but images and videos on social media showed the self-driving taxis stopped at intersections with hazard lights on.
“We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services in the San Francisco Bay Area due to the widespread power outage,” Suzanne Philion, a spokesperson for Waymo, told Engadget in an email. “Our teams are working diligently and in close coordination with city officials, and we are hopeful to bring our services back online soon.”
The power outage was attributed to a fire at one of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E)’s substations. The incident began sometime on Saturday morning, which PG&E said affected approximately 130,000 customers. As of Sunday morning, the Californian power company said its crews have restored power to about 110,000 of those customers, while working on the remaining 21,000 customers in “the Presidio, Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and small areas of downtown San Francisco.”
Waymo hasn’t provided an explanation as to why the power outage left its autonomous cars stranded in San Francisco streets, but this episode may have revealed a notable fault with the Waymo Driver system. Waymo indicates on its website that its autonomous driving system “responds to signs and signals, like traffic light colors and temporary stop signs,” which could indicate that the self-driving cars struggled with the out-of-order street lights. Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, also saw an opportunity to chime in on X, posting that “Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage.”
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for all things “future of transportation.” To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!
The year in transportation started with a couple of bankruptcies — Canoo and Nikola — and now it’s ending with two more. Rad Power Bikes is coming to an end — or at least a bankruptcy. The electric bike company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, weeks after it warned employees that it could shut down without new funding. A spokesperson told TechCrunch the company will continue to operate while the bankruptcy case proceeds, and it’s looking to sell the business within 45-60 days.
And then there is troubled lidar maker Luminar, which also filed for bankruptcy this week. The Luminar bankruptcy does not seem like a let’s-help-it-live-another-day type of situation.
The Luminar filing, which occurred after months of layoffs, executive departures, and a legal fight with its largest customer, Volvo, notes the company plans to sell off the business. It has already reached a deal to sell its semiconductor subsidiary. While the company will continue to operate during the bankruptcy process to “minimize disruptions” for its suppliers and customers, Luminar will eventually cease to exist once it’s completed, senior reporter Sean O’Kane reported. Want to learn more? I recommend reading O’Kane’s piece that looks at how Luminar’s doomed Volvo deal helped drag the company into bankruptcy.
Even though the year was bookended by some failures, that doesn’t mean 2025 wasn’t filled with innovation and growth. The emerging robotaxi industry has indeed emerged. With that I have noticed new kinds of autonomous vehicle-adjacent companies popping up, and I expect that to become a trend in 2026.
The scale of robotaxis was largely driven by Waymo’s fast-paced growth, although Zoox and Tesla have also started to set up shop. This next year could be when we see these companies really squaring off in the same markets; it will also be the year when companies will face even greater scrutiny over safety and how robotaxis fit into daily life.
Meanwhile, EVs have had their struggles this year and automakers have struggled to adjust.
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For instance, Ford is pivoting yet again. The company said this week it is ending production of the fully-electric F-150 Lightning as part of a broader companywide shake-up that will put more emphasis on hybrids and gas-powered vehicles. As part of its shift, Ford is turning to the increasingly popular “extended range electric vehicle” version of the truck, which adds a gas generator that can recharge the battery pack to power the motors for over 700 miles. It’s also getting into the energy storage business — gotta do something with all those batteries — and says it is still committed to producing a midsized electric truck that will go on sale in 2027.
But hey, the EV is not dead. And the promise of smaller, more affordable ones are looming in the near distance with the imminent launch of Rivian’s R2 and Slate Auto’s electric truck.
Housekeeping note: This is the last newsletter of the year. The next time you hear from me, I will be in Las Vegas for the annual tech trade show known as CES. Going? Reach out.
To everyone, thank you for reading, participating in the polls, and sending me emails (yes, even the critical ones). Your voice matters and I love hearing from you. See you in 2026!
A little bird
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Reporter Jagmeet Singh, who is based in India, always seems to have birds chirping in his ear about startup deals. The latest is Spinny, the Indian online marketplace for used cars.
Spinny is raising around $160 million, funds that will be used to acquire car services startup GoMechanic. TechCrunch learned the Series G round includes a mix of primary and secondary transactions and will value the 10-year-old startup at about $1.8 billion post-money.
Boatsetter and GetMyBoat, two companies that operate Airbnb-type business models for boats, agreed to merge.
Cowboy is back — sort of. The Brussels e-bike startup has been acquired by ReBirth Group Holding, a company that owns Gitane, Peugeot, and Solex. The e-bike startup had its buzzy moments but ultimately ran into problems, including a frame recall. The terms weren’t disclosed, but apparently it includes €15 million ($17.6 million) from existing shareholders.
Nirvana Insurance, an insurance tech startup focused on trucking, raised $100 million in a Series D funding round led by Valor Equity Partners. Lightspeed and General Catalyst also joined. Former TC reporter Mary Ann Azevedo had the scoop on the new valuation, which is now $1.5 billion.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Redwoodlaunched a newly patented Battery Collection Bin designed to encourage consumers to recycle batteries. The system, which will launch in San Francisco, safely stores, packages, and monitors hundreds of batteries and battery-containing devices.
Rivian has added its branded “Universal Hands-Free” driving via a software update to its second-generation R1 EVs (not sure I am a fan of that term “universal hands-free,” btw). This upgrade will allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel on 3.5 million miles of roads in the U.S. and Canada (so long as there are visible painted lines). Also in case you missed it over the weekend, senior reporter Sean O’Kane took us inside Rivian’s bet on AI-powered self-driving.
Securing America’s Future Energy has a new CEO. Avery Ash, SAFE’s Senior Vice President of Government Affairs and Special Initiatives, will become the organization’s next CEO.
Slate Auto, the electric truck startup backed by Jeff Bezos, said it has collected more than 150,000 refundable reservations for its low-cost EV due out at the end of 2026.
Sterling Anderson has been on the job at GM for six months and there is already chatter about him taking over as CEO once Mary Barra retires. My take: Anderson has big tasks ahead, so let’s all take a beat before assuming he’ll get that top post. GM president Mark Reuss is also in the wings.
Tesla has pulled its human safety monitors out of its robotaxis in Austin. The robotaxi service is limited with a fleet size numbering in the dozens. Still, it is a milestone. And for those wondering, the California Department of Motor Vehicles told me this week that Tesla has not applied for a driverless testing permit. The company only holds a permit to test autonomous vehicle technology with a human safety operator located behind the wheel.
Meanwhile, Tesla is facing a tricky situation in California. Here’s the gist: An administrative law judge agreed with the case initiated by California’s Department of Motor Vehicles and ruled Tesla engaged in deceptive marketing that gave customers a false impression of the capabilities of its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving driver-assistance software. The DMV wanted to suspend Tesla’s sales and manufacturing licenses in the state for 30 days as a penalty for its action, and a judge has agreed.
Ah, but wait. The DMV stayed the order and is giving Tesla 60 days to comply. That gives Tesla two options if it wants to keep those licenses: drop the Autopilot name or ship software to its cars that make them autonomous.
One more thing …
Some of you might not know that I am also co-host of Equity, a TechCrunch’s podcast about the business of startups. I generally co-host our Friday show, which offers commentary and analysis on the news of the week.
Every now and then I interview a founder or VC for the Wednesday show. My latest is an interview with Jiten Behl, partner at Eclipse Ventures and former chief growth officer at Rivian, who thinks we’re entering an era of major reindustrialization in the U.S. — one where factories run on AI-powered robots, not cheap overseas labor. Check out the episode here.
There was a power outage in San Francisco on Saturday, initially leaving 124,000 of 414,000 customers—about 30%—in the dark. It also caused a widespread Waymo meltdown, with apparently all active Waymo robotaxis in the affected parts of the city stuck in robotic comas, blocking intersections and choking traffic on some streets.
Waymo spokesperson Suzanne Philion issued a statement at approximately 7:00 p.m., saying service had been “temporarily suspended” due to the outage. “We are focused on keeping our riders safe and ensuring emergency personnel have the clear access they need to do their work,” Philion said.
6 Waymo’s parked at a broken traffic light blocking the roads. Seems like they were not trained for a power outage pic.twitter.com/9fBkoxgKwe
As of Sunday morning there wasn’t yet an update from Waymo on whether the company’s robotaxis were still out of commission, nor on what had caused the problem in the first place.
Gizmodo asked Waymo if the vehicles had trouble traversing blacked-out stoplights, or if the issue had something to do with data reception or transmission. We also asked the company if any Waymo vehicles were still blocking the streets. We will update if we hear back. (Update: Waymo provided a statement, which has been appended to the end of this article)
Until there’s some kind of postmortem from the Alphabet-owned company, there’s no way to be absolutely sure that the problem wasn’t an Anakin Skywalker-type situation, in which the nerve center of the robot hive was destroyed by a 9-year-old, causing all the robots to drop dead.
Companies like Waymo hold themselves up as harbingers of a safer future on the roads, touting statistics like 82% fewer crashes in which an airbag deployed, and 92% fewer pedestrian collisions with injuries when compared to human drivers.
But, like when a San Francisco Waymo fatally ran over a locally famous cat named Kit Kat in October, the issue may be less about Waymos being better or worse than humans in aggregate than the fact that robots fail in unpredictable, alien ways. The actual footage of Kit Kat’s fatal injury shows one such example. A human driver probably wouldn’t do what seems to happen in the video: start from a dead stop while a person is actively trying to coax a cat out from under their car.
Similarly, human drivers tend not to suddenly go offline en masse when there’s a blackout.
Updated at 7:12 p.m. ET. A Waymo spokesperson provided the following statement:
“We are resuming ride-hailing service in the San Francisco Bay Area. Yesterday’s power outage was a widespread event that caused gridlock across San Francisco, with non-functioning traffic signals and transit disruptions. While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events.
“Throughout the outage, we closely coordinated with San Francisco city officials. We are focused on rapidly integrating the lessons learned from this event, and are committed to earning and maintaining the trust of the communities we serve every day.”
A parenthetical has also been added above indicating that Waymo replied to Gizmodo.
