The sprawling metropolis of Phoenix continues to be a testbed for Waymo, and not just on the technical front. The Alphabet-owned company has used its first testing and commercial market to experiment with its business model, too, including delivery.
Waymo is known for its robotaxis, but it has tested how its tech could be used for delivery. The company previously tapped UPS and Uber Eats for pilot programs, and it also put considerable staff and resources towards developing self-driving trucks under its Waymo Via arm, before shuttering that program in 2023 to focus on robotaxis.
Now, it seems Waymo is ready to test the delivery waters through a strategic, multi-year partnership with DoorDash. Waymo doesn’t have any other active delivery-focused testing, operations, or partnerships, according to a company spokesperson.
The partnership will match DoorDash customers ordering food and groceries within a 315-square-mile area of Phoenix with a self-driving Waymo, the company wrote in a blog post.
Not every DoorDash order will result in a Waymo delivery. Initially, the Waymo delivery service will deliver orders from DashMart — DoorDash’s convenience, grocery, and retail stores. The companies said that, over time, more local Phoenix merchants and a wider variety of offerings will be added.
David Richter, Vice President of Business and Corporate Development at DoorDash, said the deal with Waymo will give customers a “new and delightful experience, while advancing our vision for a multi-modal autonomous future of local commerce.”
DoorDash isn’t new to the autonomous vehicle technology arena. The company has partnered with sidewalk delivery bot company Serve Robotics to cover parts of Los Angeles. It also has its own in-house autonomous vehicle tech team that developed and produced an autonomous delivery bot called Dot. The delivery bot, which was revealed in September, is being tested in the Phoenix area.
The deal with Waymo won’t involve DoorDash’s Dot vehicle, however. Instead, food or groceries will be placed in the trunk of a Waymo vehicle — a driverless Jaguar I-Pace that will navigate on its own to the customer. From here, the customer will have to retrieve the items from the trunk via the DoorDash app.
This last step, which requires the customer to walk out to the car and grab the delivered items, will be the big test for both companies, hoping to determine if receiving groceries delivered by an autonomous vehicle outweighs the convenience of a human handing over the items at their door.
Waymo is bringing its autonomous taxis to the UK in 2026, marking the company’s first major expansion outside of the US. Waymo has selected the mobility company, Moove, as its fleet operations partner, and is currently working with local and national authorities in the UK to gain the necessary permissions to launch a robotaxi service in London first next year.
Right now, you won’t find any fully driverless cars in London or anywhere in the UK, but that’s set to change next year when the begins to take effect. This legislation is intended to regulate the eventual arrival of self-driving vehicles in the UK, but before that can happen, the government will help to facilitate robotaxi pilots from Spring 2026.
Given its complex road network and narrow winding streets built long before cars were a concern, London will be a challenging city for Waymo’s robotaxis to navigate, but the company said in a that its technology significantly reduces the risk of injury-causing collisions with other vehicles and pedestrians compared to human-driven cars. The imminent arrival of Waymo in the UK was also welcomed by the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), with self-driving taxis seen as an important first step in ushering in autonomous travel on a larger scale.
Waymo already has close links to the UK, with its first international engineering hubs located in London and Oxford. It also has a partnership with UK-based Jaguar Land Rover, which sees it equip all-electric Jaguar I-Pace taxis with its Waymo Driver self–driving tech in the US.
However, Waymo won’t be without competition when its service arrives in London next year. Uber and Wayve are for their own pilot to launch around the same time, after the latter’s CEO and co-founder, Alex Kendall, called the arrival of the Automated Vehicles Act “a defining moment for UK autonomy.”
Police near San Francisco say a self-driving Waymo vehicle made an illegal U-turn, raising questions about accountability when driverless cars break the law. With more autonomous vehicles hitting the road, CBS News senior transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave reports on why there is still room for improvement.
An autonomous self-driving Waymo was caught on tape Monday in the Atlanta, Georgia, area, blowing past a school bus that had stopped with its red lights flashing, a move that would have landed a human driver a $1,000 ticket.
Altanta police have not issued a citation in the case and told CBS News they currently have no reports on the incident.
Waymo said it is investigating the incident, which appeared to involve a school bus for Atlanta Public Schools. CBS News reached out to the school district for comment.
It’s the latest in a series of Waymo driving mistakes that have gone viral. Last weekend, police in the San Francisco Bay Area pulled a Waymo over after it made an illegal U-turn. San Bruno police said that since there was no human driver, a ticket could not be issued, saying their citation books “don’t have a box for ‘robot.’”
Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, offers driverless rides in five cities — San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Phoenix and Atlanta — with plans to expand. Waymo hopes to be in Washington, D.C, Miami and Dallas as soon as next year. It is also currently testing its service in New York City.
Waymo first started offering its fully autonomous driverless robotaxi service to the public in October 2020 in Phoenix.
CBS News got an exclusive look last year as Waymo was being tested on Arizona freeways.
“It’s really about never making a mistake, driving defensively, and predicting things that could go wrong” Pierre Kreitmann, principal software engineer for Waymo, told CBS News at the time. “…So the bar is to make as few mistakes as possible, and be safer than a human driver would be.”
The company argues that its own safety data shows 91% fewer serious injury crashes, and 92% fewer crashes injuring a pedestrian, compared to a human driver.
But it acknowledges the vehicles are still learning, telling CBS News in a statement that “the trust and safety of the communities we serve is our top priority. We continuously refine our system’s performance to navigate complex scenarios.”
“I think they need to be held to a higher standard,” said former National Transportation Safety Board chair Robert Sumwalt, a CBS News transportation safety expert and analyst, of self-driving vehicles. “…Before we have widespread use of self-driving vehicles, we’ve got to make sure that they are implemented properly.”
Emmy Award-winning journalist Kris Van Cleave is the senior transportation correspondent for CBS News based in Phoenix, Arizona, where he also serves as a national correspondent reporting for all CBS News broadcasts and platforms.
Police in Northern California were understandably perplexed when they pulled over a Waymo taxi after it made an illegal U-turn, only to find no driver behind the wheel and therefore, no one to ticket.
The San Bruno Police Department wrote in now viral weekend social media posts that officers were conducting a DUI operation early Saturday morning when a self-driving Waymo made the illegal turn in front of them.
Officers stopped the vehicle, but declined to write a ticket as their “citation books don’t have a box for ‘robot’.”
“That’s right … no driver, no hands, no clue,” read the post, which was accompanied by photos of an officer peering into the car.
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Officers contacted Waymo to report what they called a “glitch,” and in the post, they said they hope reprogramming will deter more illegal moves.
The department’s Facebook post has generated more than 500 comments, with many people outraged that police didn’t ticket the company. People also wanted to know how police got the car to pull over.
But San Bruno Sgt. Scott Smithmatungol said they can only ticket a human driver or operator for a moving violation, unlike parking tickets that can be left with the vehicle.
A new state law that kicks in next year will allow police to report moving violations to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is figuring out the specifics, including potential penalties, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina told the LA Times that the company’s autonomous driving system is closely monitored by regulators. “We are looking into this situation and are committed to improving road safety through our ongoing learnings and experience,” Ilina said.
Waymos currently operate in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco and in areas south of the city, including the suburb of San Bruno.
“It blew up a lot bigger than we thought,” Smithmatungol said of the viral post to The Associated Press on Tuesday. “We’re not a large agency like San Francisco.”
San Bruno has about 40,000 residents and a sworn police force of 50 officers, he said.
Waymo is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
Police in Northern California were understandably perplexed when they pulled over a Waymo taxi after it made an illegal U-turn, only to find no driver behind the wheel and therefore, no one to ticket.The San Bruno Police Department wrote in now viral weekend social media posts that officers were conducting a DUI operation early Saturday morning when a self-driving Waymo made the illegal turn in front of them.Officers stopped the vehicle, but declined to write a ticket as their “citation books don’t have a box for ‘robot’.”“That’s right … no driver, no hands, no clue,” read the post, which was accompanied by photos of an officer peering into the car.Officers contacted Waymo to report what they called a “glitch,” and in the post, they said they hope reprogramming will deter more illegal moves.The department’s Facebook post has generated more than 500 comments, with many people outraged that police didn’t ticket the company. People also wanted to know how police got the car to pull over.But San Bruno Sgt. Scott Smithmatungol said they can only ticket a human driver or operator for a moving violation, unlike parking tickets that can be left with the vehicle.A new state law that kicks in next year will allow police to report moving violations to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is figuring out the specifics, including potential penalties, the Los Angeles Times reports.Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina told the LA Times that the company’s autonomous driving system is closely monitored by regulators. “We are looking into this situation and are committed to improving road safety through our ongoing learnings and experience,” Ilina said.Waymos currently operate in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco and in areas south of the city, including the suburb of San Bruno.“It blew up a lot bigger than we thought,” Smithmatungol said of the viral post to The Associated Press on Tuesday. “We’re not a large agency like San Francisco.”San Bruno has about 40,000 residents and a sworn police force of 50 officers, he said.Waymo is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
SAN FRANCISCO —
Police in Northern California were understandably perplexed when they pulled over a Waymo taxi after it made an illegal U-turn, only to find no driver behind the wheel and therefore, no one to ticket.
The San Bruno Police Department wrote in now viral weekend social media posts that officers were conducting a DUI operation early Saturday morning when a self-driving Waymo made the illegal turn in front of them.
Officers stopped the vehicle, but declined to write a ticket as their “citation books don’t have a box for ‘robot’.”
“That’s right … no driver, no hands, no clue,” read the post, which was accompanied by photos of an officer peering into the car.
Officers contacted Waymo to report what they called a “glitch,” and in the post, they said they hope reprogramming will deter more illegal moves.
The department’s Facebook post has generated more than 500 comments, with many people outraged that police didn’t ticket the company. People also wanted to know how police got the car to pull over.
But San Bruno Sgt. Scott Smithmatungol said they can only ticket a human driver or operator for a moving violation, unlike parking tickets that can be left with the vehicle.
A new state law that kicks in next year will allow police to report moving violations to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is figuring out the specifics, including potential penalties, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina told the LA Times that the company’s autonomous driving system is closely monitored by regulators. “We are looking into this situation and are committed to improving road safety through our ongoing learnings and experience,” Ilina said.
Waymos currently operate in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco and in areas south of the city, including the suburb of San Bruno.
“It blew up a lot bigger than we thought,” Smithmatungol said of the viral post to The Associated Press on Tuesday. “We’re not a large agency like San Francisco.”
San Bruno has about 40,000 residents and a sworn police force of 50 officers, he said.
Waymo is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
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!
The autonomous vehicle industry is years — maybe decades — from maturing. And so there’s still a Wild West quality to the sector, in spite of the steady stream of announcements that do show marked progress. Two such news items from this week illustrate my point of progress, possibility, and even a bit of peril (at least to the ups and downs a public market can provide).
First up is Gatik, an AV and logistics startup that is applying its tech to middle-mile trucks. The startup, which I first wrote about in 2019, announced a multi-year and expanded commercial partnership with Canada’s largest retailer, Loblaw. Under the deal, Gatik will deploy 20 autonomous trucks by the end of 2025 to provide driverless delivery to Loblaw’s network of stores in the greater Toronto area. Co-founder and CEO Gautam Narang told me the company will add another 30 autonomous trucks to the fleet by the end of 2026.
The deal is notable, and not just because of the fleet size. As Narang explained to me, the trucks will be handling the full regional network for Loblaw. This means these third-generation AV trucks will operate autonomously to pick up products from two distribution centers and make deliveries to over 300 retail stores. “These are multiple brands within the Loblaw umbrella,” he said.
In other words, this is not some fixed-route pilot program. It’s commercial, and it’s complex.
Next up is Kodiak Robotics, another startup I have reported on since its founding. The company, which is developing self-driving trucks for highway, industrial, and defense uses, began trading on Nasdaq this week under the tickers KDK and KDKRW.
The company, which is now called Kodiak AI, went public via a merger with special-purpose acquisition company Ares Acquisition Corporation II, an affiliate of Ares Management. The deal valued the startup at about $2.5 billion.
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Kodiak raised $275 million in financing. More than $212.5 million came from certain institutional investors, including $145 million in PIPE funding and about $62.9 million in trust cash from Ares. It should be noted that the trust cash is smaller (it was $562 million), as some SPAC investors redeemed their shares.
I spoke to founder and CEO Don Burnette the day before Kodiak’s big debut about why he took the company public — let alone via a SPAC. It was a big moment for Burnette, whose family was on hand to watch him ring the bell and mark the milestone. The stock was trading at about $7.70 Friday, down about 10% from its market open.
“As you can imagine, building and scaling a transformative autonomous driving company is very capital intensive, and we were looking to access the public markets as a path forward for the company. And when choosing between, you know, traditional IPO or a SPAC, we considered all the options,” he said. “We felt like, from a timing perspective, it was the right decision for the company (to take the SPAC route).”
It should be noted that Burnette is also quite bullish on defense. Here’s why:
“I think autonomy is the future of ground transportation broadly,” he said, before noting the benefits within defense for logistics and reconnaissance operations for ground vehicles. “One of the key things is defense requires unstructured autonomy, and this is one of the areas where we become specialists.”
A little bird
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
A few weeks ago, we wrote about some trouble at Hyundai‘s electric air taxi startup Supernal, including that the company had stopped work on its air taxi program and that its CEO and CTO were out.
This week, a little bird told us that a wider reorg of Supernal’s C-suite was afoot — something Hyundai Motor Group has now confirmed to us.
Chief strategy officer Jaeyong Song and chief safety officer Tracy Lamb are part of a “transition to new leadership,” according to the Korean conglomerate. Song’s departure is particularly notable, as he was once the VP of Hyundai’s Advanced Air Mobility division, which Supernal was spun out of in 2021. Also gone is Lina Yang, who most recently served as chief of staff to the startup’s now-former CEO, but who also served as Supernal’s “Head of Intelligent Systems” before that.
RememberMoxion Power, the portable battery startup that raised $110 million before going bankrupt? The founders are back with a new startup called Anode Technology Company, which has designed a mobile battery and inverter that can be used for EV charging and supplying remote power to construction sites and live events. The startup just raised $9 million in seed funding in a round led by Eclipse Ventures; its partner, Jiten Behl, who spearheaded the deal, was previously Rivian’s chief growth officer. Apparently, Behl’s interest was sparked by his experience at Rivian.
Side note: Palo Alto-based venture capital firm Eclipse sure has been busy this year. The VC firm led the $105 million round of Also, the micromobility startup that spun out of Rivian, and recently hired longtime T. Rowe Price Group investor Joe Fath as partner and head of growth.
The firm doesn’t explicitly focus on transportation, but some of its portfolio companies in this sector include Arc, Bedrock Robotics,Reliable Robotics, Skyryse,and Wayve.
Other deals that got my attention …
Rapido, a popular ride-hailing platform in India that competes with Uber, doubled its valuation to $2.3 billion following a secondary share sale by food delivery giant Swiggy. The share sale comes just weeks after Rapido began piloting food deliveries, edging into Swiggy’s core territory.
Telo, the tiny electric truck developer, raised $20 million in a Series A funding round co-led by designer and Telo co-founder Yves Béhar and Tesla co-founder Marc Tarpenning, who is on Telo’s board. Additional investment came from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and early-stage funds like TO VC, E12 Ventures, and Neo.
TheTrump administration is seeking up to a 10% stake in Lithium Americas in exchange for renegotiating the repayment period of a $2.26 billion Department of Energy loan. GM is a major investor in the Canadian company, which is developing a lithium mine in Nevada that is expected to be the largest in the Western Hemisphere.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Hackers have had quite an active week in the transportation sector. Stellantisconfirmed a data breach involving customers’ personal information. The breach is linked to a hack of its Salesforce database. Meanwhile, a hack that began last Friday and targeted check-in systems provided by Collins Aerospacecaused delays at Brussels, Berlin, and Dublin airports, as well as London’s Heathrow. The U.K.’s National Crime Agency has arrested a man in connection to the ransomware attack. And finally, Jaguar Land Roversaid it will not resume production at its factories for yet another week as it continues to grapple with fallout from a cyberattack.
Battery materials startup Silastarted operations at its facility in Moses Lake, Washington, a milestone that could pave the way for longer-range, faster-charging EVs. The factory is the first large-scale silicon anode factory in the West and will initially be capable of making enough battery materials for 20,000 to 50,000 EVs. Future expansion could fulfill demand for as many as 2.5 million vehicles.
Automakers continue to pull back on EVs and electrified vehicles. Honda is ending U.S. production of its Acura ZDX electric vehicle that was being built by General Motors in Tennessee, CNBC reported. And Stellantis has canceled plans to produce a 4xe plug-in hybrid Jeep Gladiator in North America by the end of 2025. Which EV is next on the chopping block?
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administrationopened an investigation into Rivian over issues with the seat belts in its electric delivery vans that could introduce additional risk in the event of a crash, Bloomberg reported.
Tesla asked the Environmental Protection Agency not to roll back current vehicle emissions standards, breaking from other major automakers that want to see the rules eased.
TuneIn, an audio streaming service, is collaborating with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deliver emergency alerts directly to drivers.
Volvo Cars is pledging a commitment to U.S. production. The company said it will continue to invest in its U.S. car plant near Charleston, South Carolina, and announced plans to expand the factory to produce a hybrid vehicle by the end of the decade.
Waymo launched “Waymo for Business,” a new service designed for companies to set up accounts so their employees can access robotaxis in cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco.
Zoox has asked federal regulators for an exemption that would allow the Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company to commercially deploy its custom-built robotaxis, which lack traditional controls like pedals and a steering wheel.
One more thing
Finally, proof of life from Luminar founder Austin Russell.
You may remember that Russell was mysteriously and suddenly replaced in May as CEO of the lidar company he created. The company has never truly explained his departure, only that it was the result of a “code of business conduct and ethics inquiry” initiated by the board.
Russell has been silent; while he remains on Luminar’s board, he hasn’t signed any of the filings the company has submitted with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since he was replaced. This week, he reappeared as the co-founder of a new company called Russell AI Labs. It’s billed as a “platform that backs and builds transformative AI and frontier technology companies.”
It doesn’t seem like his troubles at Luminar have affected his ability to attract high-profile support or make eyebrow-raising deals. Russell’s co-founders are Markus Schäfer, CTO and board member at Mercedes-Benz Group AG, and Murtaza Ahmed, who served as a managing director at Goldman Sachs before joining SoftBank and was a partner in the $100 billion Vision Fund and managing partner of its $5 billion Latin America Fund.
As part of Russell AI Lab’s debut, the startup announced it has taken a $300 million stake in agentic AI company Emergence AI.
Waymo has unveiled a new enterprise transportation program. The service offers companies access to the brand’s autonomous vehicles on a larger scale than individual one-off rides, with features such as establishing commuter programs, transporting riders to events and providing other forms of corporate travel. Waymo for Business is available in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix at launch.
Clients who sign up for this option can use Waymo’s business portal to establish their program and manage riders, whether that’s regular employees or limited-time guests. It will also have metrics for budget management and ride activity. The whole operation is still in early days, and it seems possible that Waymo for Business will adapt based on what customers most want from the autonomous vehicle company.
2025 has been a busy year for Waymo. The company plans to test its fleet in this year, rolled out a option in July, and already has its sights set on in 2026.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says autonomous cars will act as a “catalyst” for EV adoption as Uber expands its global self-driving footprint. Photo by Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Annual Summit
The once-booming U.S. market for electric vehicles is slowing, but Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi isn’t fazed. Speaking today (Sept. 23) at the Concordia Summit in New York, he said Uber’s push into self-driving cars could act as a “catalyst” for EV adoption.
Beyond safety and affordability, autonomous vehicles (AVs) offer another key advantage: sustainability. “The other really positive factor with AVs is that AVs are, by nature, also electric,” said Khosrowshahi, who pointed to Uber’s growing autonomous footprint in the U.S. as a way to help revive the country’s flailing EV transition.
Uber, led by Khosrowshahi since 2017, currently offers AV rides in Austin, Atlanta and Phoenix through a partnership with Alphabet’s Waymo. Abroad, the company has teamed up with China-based WeRide to provide autonomous rides overseen by human safety drivers in Middle Eastern cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
That footprint is set to expand. Later this year, Uber plans to launch in Germany and unveil new projects across Asia, Khosrowshahi said, noting the company now works with about 20 AV partners worldwide. “Autonomous is happening now, and it’s expanding all over the world.”
A supportive regulatory framework is crucial when selecting AV markets, according to Khosrowshahi, who emphasized that robot drivers are five times safer than humans. “They don’t get distracted, they’re not texting, and most of these AV models will have driven over 1,000 times the miles that you and I will ever drive,” he said.
Launching in regions where Uber has a strong presence is another advantage. Adding AV services to an existing network makes operations more efficient and helps offset high costs—self-driving cars can run well over $100,000 each. “You want these vehicles as highly utilized as possible,” noted Khosrowshahi.
Over time, AVs are expected to lower fares, which could fuel demand. To avoid worsening congestion, Khosrowshahi envisions a future dominated by shared autonomous rides carrying multiple passengers, which he called a “newer development” in the field. That’s why Uber has been investing in services like UberX Share, which lets riders split trips and costs, he said.
While AVs have been in development for decades, advances in A.I. have pushed the technology into new territory. Earlier generations of self-driving cars were largely deterministic. With the advent of large language models, modern systems can now handle complex real-world driving by learning through observation in more human-like ways. After years of research, they are “finally ready for prime time,” Khosrowshahi said. “The rate of acceleration in terms of the development of the technology, the safety of the technology, is pretty extraordinary.”
Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund led Cognition’s latest $400 million funding round. Photo by Nordin Catic/Getty Images for The Cambridge Union
Cognition AI, the San Francisco-based startup known for its A.I. software engineer Devin used by Goldman Sachs, has more than doubled its valuation to $10.2 billion after raising more than $400 million in a round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. The deal, announced yesterday (Sept. 8), also drew participation from existing backers including angel investor Elad Gil, Lux Capital, 8VC, Neo, Definition Capital and Swish VC. The fresh financing marks a stark increase from the $4 billion valuation Cognition received earlier this year.
Cognition was launched in 2023 by Scott Wu, Steven Hao and Walden Yang. Wu, the company’s CEO, previously co-founded Lunchbox, an A.I. networking platform. The founding team also includes alumni of Scale AI, Google DeepMind and self-driving software maker Waymo, as well as a number of elite coders who medaled at the International Olympiad in Informatics, a global programming competition.
Cognition’s flagship product is Devin, an A.I. software engineer. The company also made waves through acquisitions, most notably when it snapped up software firm Windsurf just days after Google hired away much of its leadership. While OpenAI had reportedly pursued Windsurf before complications with its partner Microsoft, Google in July struck a multibillion-dollar licensing deal for Windsurf’s technology and acqui-hired several top staffers. Cognition then acquired what remained of the company: its team, intellectual property and product.
Even before the Windsurf deal, Cognition’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) had climbed rapidly—from $1 million in September 2024 to $73 million by this June, Wu said in a press release. Since the acquisition, ARR has more than doubled. “We’ll continue to invest significantly in both Devin and Windsurf, and our customers are already seeing how powerful the combination is together,” Wu added, noting that clients include Goldman Sachs, Dell and Palantir.
Looking ahead, Cognition plans to expand the ways its users can leverage the combined power of Devin and Windsurf. “We’re looking forward to enabling engineers [to] manage an army of agents to build technology faster,” said Jeff Wang, Windsurf’s interim CEO since former leader Varun Mohan departed for Google, in a LinkedIn post. “It’s been quite an eventful last few months, and now it’s time to show what we’re made of.”
Elon Musk, already the world’s richest person, could become the first trillionaire after the Tesla board unveiled a massive new pay package for its CEO to keep his focus on the troubled EV maker.The package would grant him additional shares of Tesla stock if the company is able to grow far beyond its current value, with a market capitalization far greater than any company has ever approached. Musk’s previous pay package, which added significantly to his massive wealth, also laid out ambitious growth plans that once appeared to be a reach – but which Tesla proved able to reach easily.The new pay package could grant Musk 423.7 million additional shares of Tesla stock. Those shares would be worth $143.5 billion at today’s stock value.But Musk would get those shares only if the value of Tesla stock increases significantly in coming years. The company stock would need to reach an overall value of $8.5 trillion for Musk to get all the shares, significantly above the current market capitalization of $1.1 trillion and roughly double the current market value of Nvidia (NVDA), the current most-valuable company on the market.The company’s proxy statement that laid out Musk’s payment plan also included a shareholder proposal that Tesla take a stake in privately-held xAI, the artificial intelligence company that Musk also owns. That could help Elon Musk further consolidate his growing business empire.XAI recently purchased X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk bought for $44 billion of his own money in 2022. The company did not take a position for or against that shareholder proposal, which does not give any details of how large a stake Tesla should take in xAI, and at what price.Musk currently owns 410 million shares of Tesla shares, worth $139 billion at Thursday’s closing price. That stake, along with his stakes in xAI, rocket company SpaceX, and several other companies he has started and runs, have made him the richest person on the planet, worth $378 billion according to Bloomberg’s billionaire tracker.He currently has options to buy an additional 304 million shares of Tesla, but a judge in Delaware has twice struck down that 2018 pay package that granted him those options as illegal. Those rulings came despite overwhelming approval by Tesla shareholders – twice. The company again has tried to grant those options to Musk this year, and adding in those options, he now owns 18% of the company’s shares.Tesla shares nearly doubled in value to a record-high price for its shares between election day and mid-December 2024, as investors bet that his close ties to President Donald Trump would be a boon for Tesla. But as Tesla faced protests and dropping sales and falling profits in backlash to those ties (before he had a falling out with Trump), all those things resulted in Tesla’s stock losing those gains. The shares have recovered some of those losses, but they are still down 26% from the December peak.Still, Musk and his fans on Wall Street have insisted the company is well positioned to grow even larger and more successful in the future. He has continued to predict that his plans for self-driving cars – including a robotaxi service – will create massive profits and value for shareholders. The robotaxis would provide rides to passengers and also allow Tesla owners to rent out their cars for driverless rides when not in use.Musk has also promised a line of humanoid robots that could bring in even more sales than Tesla’s car business.“It’s a big pay package but Tesla needs to keep its biggest asset in Musk as CEO,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told CNN Friday. Ives is one of the bigger Tesla bulls on Wall Street.“In this AI era Musk now will drive its next leg of growth,” Ives added. “The Board had a $1 trillion dollar decision and made the right one.”The board’s proxy statement spoke of the importance of keeping Musk focused on Tesla going forward. In addition to his many business interests, he remains active in politics, despite his falling out with President Trump. He has announced plans to form a third political party.Tesla, in its proxy statement, warned that it needed to incentivize Musk to focus his attention on growing the company. It said that during the negotiations on the pay package, “Musk also raised the possibility that he may pursue other interests that may afford him greater influence if he did not receive such assurances.”The board said it “believes that Mr. Musk singularly possesses the leadership characteristics necessary to transform Tesla and realize its long-term mission at an unparalleled level.”But, so far, those big ambitions have all been grand claims from a man and company that have often fallen short of their promises. Tesla is facing growing competition from Chinese EV makers. BYD, one of those Chinese automakers, is poised to pass Tesla for the most EV sales worldwide, even though it is not available for sale in the United States.Tesla also faces competition from other companies that are ahead of it in providing robotaxi services, including Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit of Google parent Alphabet, which has its own service and has partnered with Uber in some cities.Shares of Tesla (TSLA) were slightly higher in premarket trading on the news.
Elon Musk, already the world’s richest person, could become the first trillionaire after the Tesla board unveiled a massive new pay package for its CEO to keep his focus on the troubled EV maker.
The package would grant him additional shares of Tesla stock if the company is able to grow far beyond its current value, with a market capitalization far greater than any company has ever approached. Musk’s previous pay package, which added significantly to his massive wealth, also laid out ambitious growth plans that once appeared to be a reach – but which Tesla proved able to reach easily.
The new pay package could grant Musk 423.7 million additional shares of Tesla stock. Those shares would be worth $143.5 billion at today’s stock value.
But Musk would get those shares only if the value of Tesla stock increases significantly in coming years. The company stock would need to reach an overall value of $8.5 trillion for Musk to get all the shares, significantly above the current market capitalization of $1.1 trillion and roughly double the current market value of Nvidia (NVDA), the current most-valuable company on the market.
The company’s proxy statement that laid out Musk’s payment plan also included a shareholder proposal that Tesla take a stake in privately-held xAI, the artificial intelligence company that Musk also owns. That could help Elon Musk further consolidate his growing business empire.
XAI recently purchased X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk bought for $44 billion of his own money in 2022. The company did not take a position for or against that shareholder proposal, which does not give any details of how large a stake Tesla should take in xAI, and at what price.
Musk currently owns 410 million shares of Tesla shares, worth $139 billion at Thursday’s closing price. That stake, along with his stakes in xAI, rocket company SpaceX, and several other companies he has started and runs, have made him the richest person on the planet, worth $378 billion according to Bloomberg’s billionaire tracker.
He currently has options to buy an additional 304 million shares of Tesla, but a judge in Delaware has twice struck down that 2018 pay package that granted him those options as illegal. Those rulings came despite overwhelming approval by Tesla shareholders – twice. The company again has tried to grant those options to Musk this year, and adding in those options, he now owns 18% of the company’s shares.
Tesla shares nearly doubled in value to a record-high price for its shares between election day and mid-December 2024, as investors bet that his close ties to President Donald Trump would be a boon for Tesla. But as Tesla faced protests and dropping sales and falling profits in backlash to those ties (before he had a falling out with Trump), all those things resulted in Tesla’s stock losing those gains. The shares have recovered some of those losses, but they are still down 26% from the December peak.
Still, Musk and his fans on Wall Street have insisted the company is well positioned to grow even larger and more successful in the future. He has continued to predict that his plans for self-driving cars – including a robotaxi service – will create massive profits and value for shareholders. The robotaxis would provide rides to passengers and also allow Tesla owners to rent out their cars for driverless rides when not in use.
Musk has also promised a line of humanoid robots that could bring in even more sales than Tesla’s car business.
“It’s a big pay package but Tesla needs to keep its biggest asset in Musk as CEO,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told CNN Friday. Ives is one of the bigger Tesla bulls on Wall Street.
“In this AI era Musk now will drive its next leg of growth,” Ives added. “The Board had a $1 trillion dollar decision and made the right one.”
The board’s proxy statement spoke of the importance of keeping Musk focused on Tesla going forward. In addition to his many business interests, he remains active in politics, despite his falling out with President Trump. He has announced plans to form a third political party.
Tesla, in its proxy statement, warned that it needed to incentivize Musk to focus his attention on growing the company. It said that during the negotiations on the pay package, “Musk also raised the possibility that he may pursue other interests that may afford him greater influence if he did not receive such assurances.”
The board said it “believes that Mr. Musk singularly possesses the leadership characteristics necessary to transform Tesla and realize its long-term mission at an unparalleled level.”
But, so far, those big ambitions have all been grand claims from a man and company that have often fallen short of their promises. Tesla is facing growing competition from Chinese EV makers. BYD, one of those Chinese automakers, is poised to pass Tesla for the most EV sales worldwide, even though it is not available for sale in the United States.
Tesla also faces competition from other companies that are ahead of it in providing robotaxi services, including Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit of Google parent Alphabet, which has its own service and has partnered with Uber in some cities.
Shares of Tesla (TSLA) were slightly higher in premarket trading on the news.
Waymo is quietly drawing new boundaries over how authorities access data from its autonomous vehicles. The company said it will reject any requests that are not backed by a legal request such as a warrant or court order.
The move is one of several signaling a growing tension between innovation, privacy, and law enforcement power.
A new privacy guardrail
Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana recently emphasized that the company will challenge, limit, or reject robotaxi footage requests from law enforcement that are not backed by a valid legal process, such as a warrant or court order.
She stressed that while the company “follows the legal process to receive footage,” it reserves the right to push back on overly broad or undefined demands—a move aimed at preserving rider trust.
Each Waymo vehicle is outfitted with 29 external cameras, offering a comprehensive 360-degree view, and potentially additional internal sensors. Those devices create a new surveillance frontier, prompting concerns about misuse of private data.
Wired earlier reported that while Waymo does comply with formal legal requests, the company doesn’t disclose how often or under what circumstances footage is shared. This led to questions about data retention, misuse risks, and surveillance creep, especially when model behavior is invisible to the public.
Law, trust, and public perception
Waymo’s stance isn’t just policy. It’s a strategic response to evolving public expectations. The company now systematically informs the public when law enforcement requests arise, arguing this transparency is crucial to maintaining community confidence.
Legal scholars highlight that demands for robotaxi footage fall into unsettled territory: though subject to Fourth Amendment protections, striking a balance between privacy and legitimate investigative needs remains delicate.
Waymo’s proactive stance contrasts sharply with other self-driving players. Earlier footage from its robo-taxis was used by police during protest investigations, but always following warrants or subpoenas.
However, the company has faced vandalism and public backlash in heated moments, such as when robotaxis were burned during demonstrations, intensifying concerns about surveillance and public safety.
In pushing back, Waymo signals a paradox of autonomy: To be accepted, robotaxis must prove not only safe, but also respectful of rights. Legal clarity and public trust may prove to be more valuable than the footage itself, in shaping the regulatory and cultural roadmap for autonomous mobility.
Waymo is preparing to launch in two more markets. The company announced today that it will expand into both and . It will begin testing with humans behind the wheel this week, bringing up to a dozen vehicles to each location, according to . The rollout will include a mix of the brand’s fully electric Jaguar iPace and Geely Zeekr autonomous vehicles.
“We will begin driving manually before validating our technology and operations for fully autonomous services in the future,” a representative told CNBC.
This has been a busy year for the Alphabet-owned Waymo, which said in January that it planned to introduce its autonomous vehicles to during 2025. The company partnered with Uber for its launch in June and also rolled out a teen account option in July. Waymo received permits to begin testing its cars in New York City last month.
Waymo announced Tuesday that it’s going to bring both of its vehicles — the Jaguar I-Pace SUV and the Zeekr van — to Denver and Seattle starting this week, the latest move in a continued expansion across the United States.
The vehicles will be manually driven to start, before the company starts testing its autonomous tech in both cities. Waymo told TechCrunch that it hopes to start offering robotaxi trips in Denver next year and the Seattle metropolitan area “as soon as we’re permitted to do so.” Denver and Seattle will be two of the most extreme-weather cities that Waymo is feeling out, giving it a chance to test out its tech in snow, wind, and rain that is harder to come by in places like Phoenix.
The new cities join a growing list of places where Waymo is operating in the U.S. Just last week the company announced that it has more than 2,000 robotaxis in its commercial fleet countrywide, with 800 in the San Francisco Bay Area, 500 in Los Angeles, 400 in Phoenix, 100 in Austin, and “dozens” in Atlanta. Waymo has also announced plans to launch a commercial robotaxi services in Dallas, Miami, and Washington, D.C., next year, and recently received a permit to start testing in New York City.
That’s not to mention the other cities where Waymo has dipped its toes. It’s brought vehicles on “road trips” to places like Philadelphia and plans to do the same in Las Vegas, San Diego, Houston, Orlando, and San Antonio.
POV: The apocalypse is here and dust is everywhere, but your robot driver calmly scoots onward through the low-visibility streets. That’s the vibe of a video Waymo posted to its Reddit page on Tuesday, just a day after a massive wall of dust — what we locals call a haboob — rolled into Phoenix and engulfed everything in sight…
Livery drivers with the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers rallied outside Gov. Hochul’s midtown office on Monday, calling for an end to the city’s testing of driverless taxi cars by tech giant Waymo.
“Taxi and livery drivers risk their lives every day to transport New Yorkers safely,” NYSFTD president Steven Rivera said in a statement. “Robots cannot replace human instinct, compassion, or accountability.”
Monday’s rally, in which about a dozen drivers showed up outside Hochul’s office, comes days after Mayor Adams’ announcement on Friday that the city had approved an application by the Google subsidiary, allowing it to test eight driverless cars in Downtown Brooklyn and in Manhattan south of 110th St.
The cars will still be required to have humans in the driver seat, and Waymo will have to file a report with the city each time the human driver has to take over for the robotaxi.
City and state law forbids the eight cars from acting as taxis during the test period, and Waymo has not applied for plates with the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission.
Nevertheless, Fernando Mateo, a spokesman for the Federation of Taxi Drivers, said the test was a grave threat to his members’ livelihood.
“Cancer starts with a dot and then it spreads,” Mateo told The News Monday. “This is a cancer to us.”
All three organizations representing Gotham’s taxi, livery and ride-share drivers have now called on the city to end testing and protect the jobs of human drivers.
Last week, Brendan Sexton, head of the Independent Drivers Guild, accused Adams of turning Gothamites into “lab rats for Silicon Valley investors who are seeking to destroy the livelihoods of the 100,000 New Yorkers.”
Bhairavi Desai, head of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, questioned whether there was any real consumer demand.
“If you don’t want to be around people, there’s plenty of other places to live around the country,” Desai told the Daily News Friday. “Does New York really need a driverless car to feel advanced?”
Asked about the rally, Sean Butler, a spokesman for Hochul, emphasized that the state was ensuring the safety of any driverless technology testing.
“State law establishes clear procedures for permitting of autonomous vehicle testing, with the highest safety standards applied,” he said in a statement. “New York State will continue to work with New York City officials to ensure the safety of any testing program.”
Waymo began lobbying in June for New York to allow fully autonomous robotaxis on city streets, a move that is currently prohibited by state law.
In July, the company began running its vehicles — identifiable by their spinning, roof-mounted sensor system — along city streets, but always with a human in full control.
Last week, less than two months later, the city’s Transportation Department approved Waymo’s plans to let computers begin to take the wheel — albeit with a human ready to jump in if need be.
Hey, all, and happy Friday! Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for news, analysis, and scoops around the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!
I was sad to have missed the Monterey Car Week this year, especially because there were a number of reveals I was interested in, including the all-electricCadillac Opulent Velocity; the Chevrolet Corvette CX and CX.R Vision Gran Turismo concepts; and Lucid Gravity X reveals. But alas, the sprawling, Champagne-soaked grounds of Quail or the sea of seersucker suits and wide-brimmed hats at Pebble Beach Golf Course were suboptimal landscapes for my newly fractured and boot-encased foot. Next year!
In the meantime, I thought I would reach out to you, dear reader, to get your forecast on what’s in store for automakers and EV sales in the United States once the federal EV tax credit expires September 30.
My prediction? Well I don’t really want to taint the results, but I will say this: Automakers are going to have to do something in the short term to attract customers, and not just because of the expiring EV tax credit.
A little bird
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Serve Robotics, the autonomous sidewalk delivery robot company, announced earlier this week that it acquired Vayu Robotics, a startup that has developed AI foundation models and a simulation-powered data engine for robots. The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal, but some back-of-the-envelope math and a little bird helped me determine that Serve Robotics paid between $45 million and $50 million for Vayu.
Several weeks ago, I highlighted a deal between Uber, autonomous vehicle tech startup Nuro, and EV maker Lucid. You can read about that here, but the important piece to remember is Uber’s commitment to make an undisclosed “multimillion-dollar” investment into Nuro. (Sources told me it is more than the $300 million Uber invested in Lucid.)
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Nuro has now raised more money in a Series E round that has reached $203 million from a group of new investors that includes Nvidia, existing backer Baillie Gifford, Icehouse Ventures, Kindred Ventures, and Pledge Ventures. And a portion of Uber’s investment has gone toward the Series E round.
Grid Aero, an aerospace startup, raised $6 million in seed funding from Calibrate Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures.
Group14, a battery materials startup, raised $463 million in a funding round led by battery manufacturer SK with participation from ATL, Lightrock, Microsoft, Porsche, and OMERS. Alongside the round, Group14 also announced it had “acquired full ownership” of a joint venture with SK in South Korea.
Oway, founded in 2023 and backed by Y Combinator and General Catalyst, recently closed a $4 million seed round. Read up on the company’s plan to build a decentralized “Uber for freight.”
Hertz will start selling preowned vehicles on Amazon Autos.
Redwood Materials said it is working with Caterpillar to recycle the battery packs from the company’s battery-electric underground loaders.
Tesla is planning to introduce in-car voice-assistant functions powered by DeepSeek and ByteDance’s Doubao artificial intelligence.
The Routing Company, a startup that helps transit agencies match riders with vehicles quickly and cheaply, landed Zoox as its first robotaxi client. Zoox will purchase a nonexclusive license for The Routing Company’s tech and will bring five of the startup’s engineers on board to “advance the efficiency and scalability” of its fledgling robotaxi service.
Volkswagenfaces a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey over the buttons on the steering wheel of its cars, including ID.4. The lawsuit alleges the buttons are too sensitive and too easy to activate unintentionally.
Waymo has been granted a permit to test its autonomous vehicles in New York City, the first such approval granted by the city. The company told TechCrunch it plans to start testing “immediately.”
In the world of drones and food, I suppose it was inevitable we would get Zipotle — a merging of the words Zipline and Chipotle. Zipline, an autonomous drone delivery startup, has partnered with Chipotle to fly digital orders to guests’ locations in the greater Dallas area.
One more thing …
Vanity Fair has a lengthy feature on Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana that digs into her past, how she manages, and, as the author notes, her un-Elon style. It’s worth the read and gives me an opportunity to remind you all that Mawakana will be on our stage at Disrupt 2025, which will be held October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.
Waymo has become the first autonomous vehicle operator to secure a permit to test self-driving cars on the streets of New York City, the state’s department of transportation said in announcing the news.
The New York City Department of Motor Vehicles approved Waymo’s application, allowing the company to conduct limited testing of its autonomous vehicles within certain city zones.
The permit comes after years of regulatory negotiations and signals a potential shift toward broader deployment of driverless cars in applications such as ride-hailing and delivery services in the city’s complex traffic environment.
Waymo says it has completed over 10 million rides in 1,500 cars spread out across the United states, and the company has had high-profile self-driving car debuts in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin.
The move marks a significant milestone for the industry in the United States’ most densely populated urban environment and is a new salvo in the battle for dominance of the domestic driverless car market.
So what can Waymo do in NYC?
As part of its test program in NYC, the city mayor’s office said that Waymo will be allowed to test eight cars across Brooklyn and Manhattan, and must regularly check in with the Department of Transportation about data and safety.
“We’re a tech-friendly administration and we’re always looking for innovative ways to safely move our city forward,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement. “New York City is proud to welcome Waymo to test this new technology in Manhattan and Brooklyn, as we know this testing is only the first step in moving our city further into the 21st century.”
Waymo is required to have a trained, specialist driver in the cars at all times.
Why does Waymo’s NYC permit matter?
Waymo’s permit is a landmark development for a sector that has faced skepticism from people who live and work where self-driving technology has been tested.
With the backing of five large American cities where it is testing its cars, Waymo’s NYC plan could help accelerate the pace of adoption in urban centers across the U.S., if it can show it is safe and easy to use.
With safety protocols and regulatory frameworks continuing to evolve nationwide, a seamless launch and test period would go a long way toward convincing local riders and regulators that driverless technology is safe, MSNBC reports.
The move is part of a broader trend of U.S. cities and states gradually opening their roads to autonomous vehicles, balancing safety concerns with the potential benefits of reduced traffic congestion and improved mobility options.
Waymo can now test its self-driving cars in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has announced. Local authorities have granted the company the permit needed to be able to test autonomous vehicles in parts of Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn. It’s the first-ever permit for the “testing deployment” of AVs the city has granted. Waymo will be able to deploy a fleet with up to eight vehicles in the city until late September 2025. For now, though, the permit only allows Waymo to test its AVs with drivers behind the wheel.
The company announced earlier this year that it was going to test its driverless system in 10 new cities in 2025. In June, it filed a request for permission to test its AVs in New York City in hopes that it can someday bring its autonomous ride-hailing service to the Big Apple. To note, while Adams said the city granted Waymo the first permit of its kind, the company deployed its vehicles to map some parts of NYC back in 2021.
Under the permit, Waymo will be required to regularly report the data gathered from its testing to the Department of Transportation to certify that it’s “adhering to the industry’s best practices related to cybersecurity.” Waymo will be given the opportunity to apply for an extension after its pilot testing period ends in September. It may have to continue testing them with human operators for a while, though: New York state law prohibits the operation of vehicles without a driver behind the wheel, but Waymo told Forbesthat it’s lobbying to change the regulation.
Soon you could see Waymo self-driving tech in Hyundai cars. The autonomous driving tech developer Waymo said this week that it would partner with the Korean automaker Hyundai to equip a fleet of its electric vehicles with self-driving technology. The vehicles, modified Ioniq 5s, will hit the road as part of Waymo’s self-driving ride-hail service in late 2025, the companies said.
In a statement, Hyundai Motor Company president and global COO José Muñoz called the agreement a “first step” in the two firms’ partnership. “We are actively exploring additional opportunities for collaboration,” he said—opening up the possibility that Waymo self-driving tech could one day be installed on Hyundai passenger vehicles.
However, the multinational partnership is the latest to prompt questions about how Waymo, arguably the world’s most successful autonomous-driving company, will handle a global realignment of the automotive industry.
The US Commerce Department also last month proposed a rule that would ban some Chinese- and Russian-made automotive hardware and software from the US, with an emphasis on technology that enables autonomy. Just this week, the European Union voted to hike tariffs against Chinese-made electric vehicles.
Interestingly, Waymo insists that a partnership with Chinese-owned automaker Zeekr is still on. The deal, announced in late 2021, has seen Zeekr purpose-build roomier autonomous minivans for the Alphabet subsidiary that are also less expensive to manufacture. The Zeekr vehicle officially made its debut in San Francisco in June, though Waymo says it’s still in testing and is not yet part of its public ride-hail fleet.
Zeekr is owned by Chinese automaker Geely, though its design center and one of its research and development facilities are in Gothenburg, Sweden. The Swedish city is also the headquarters of majority Geely-owned automakers Volvo and Polestar, an all-electric premium automaker.
In an email on Friday, Waymo spokesperson Chris Bonelli wrote that the Hyundai Ioniq 5s “will not replace any of our other vehicle platforms,” and said the company is “hard at work validating” the latest version of Waymo’s tech on the Zeekr platform.
In proposing new rules targeting Chinese-made auto software and hardware, the US government argued that such tech installed on US vehicles could create a long-term national security issue. “Imagine if there were thousands or hundreds of thousands of Chinese-connected vehicles on American roads that could be immediately and simultaneously disabled by somebody in Beijing,” US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said earlier this year.
But in public comments submitted to the Commerce Department in April, Waymo representatives insisted that, despite its partnership with the Chinese automaker, China has nothing to do with the vital tech of the Zeekr-made robotaxi. “The AV-ready base vehicles being provided to Waymo have no driving automation or telematics capabilities built into them,” the company wrote, saying that only US-based Waymo personnel install autonomous technology onto vehicles at an American factory. The company said that, once operating in the US, the vehicles cannot remotely communicate with the vehicle’s manufacturer—Zeekr.
