Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility<\/strong>, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free \u2014 just click TechCrunch Mobility!<\/p>\n I\u2019ve joked here and on the Equity and Autonocast podcasts that the autonomous vehicle industry feels a lot like 2016, at least in terms of the buzziness surrounding the sector.<\/p>\n But a recent conversation with Trucks VC partner Puneeth Meruva<\/strong> has me rethinking that comparison. There\u2019s evidence that 2026 is even hotter \u2014 at least by certain measures \u2014 than those frothy dealmaking days of 2016 and 2017.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trucks VC, which specializes in early-stage investing, has fielded pitches from 81 new autonomous vehicle startups so far in 2026 \u2014 two-thirds more than last year and enough to surpass the boom years of a decade ago.\u00a0 The VC firm argues in a new blog post that we\u2019re in the midst of a second, even bigger AV wave fueled by technological breakthroughs. Yes, I\u2019m talking about AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFor a long time AV companies were trying to go from what was AV 1.0 to AV 2.0, which is kind of this holy grail end-to-end architecture for AVs,\u201d Meruva told me. \u201cAnd I think the foundation models now provide a technical architecture that makes those end-to-end systems possible.\u201d<\/p>\n These foundational models are particularly good at generalizing across different environments and scenarios, potentially making AVs cheaper and faster to deploy. The arrival of powerful open source models like Nvidia\u2019s Alpamayo and Qwen\u2019s general-purpose vision-language-action models has made it even easier for startups to get off the ground.<\/p>\n The barrier to entry is lower than ever before. Meruva said Trucks is consistently seeing startups deploy within a few months and with less than $1 million raised. (And while Meruva wouldn\u2019t name names, the firm has invested in some of them.)<\/p>\n Of these 81 startups that pitched Trucks VC, I mistakenly assumed most would be applying their AV tech to construction, warehouse, agriculture, and mining. And yes, those were in the mix. But what surprised me was the growing number of startups pitching pure-play robotaxi businesses. And many are positioning themselves as direct competitors to Waymo.\u00a0<\/p>\n As wild and galaxy brain-thinking as that may sound, Meruva thinks there is room for smaller players.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn this world, smaller, more niche autonomy companies can compete \u2014 maybe they\u2019re not competing with Waymo on a global scale, but maybe they\u2019re competing in specific regions or specific types of routes,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n And Meruva doesn\u2019t see the pace flattening. He expects even more AV startups to pitch the firm next year.<\/p>\n Regular readers of this newsletter know we\u2019ve been closely following Slate Auto \u2014 breaking the original story on Jeff Bezos\u2019 investment way back in April 2025. But the company it spun out of is what got our attention this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n Re:Build<\/strong>, a Massachusetts-based manufacturing accelerator, raised $2.1 billion to \u201cexpand Re:Build\u2019s capacity to manufacture hard tech products and launch new industrial startups.\u201d The investment was led by General Catalyst and JPMorganChase\u2019s Strategic Investment Group. Other investors weren\u2019t disclosed.<\/p>\n The company, which was co-founded by Amazon\u2019s former commercial CEO Jeff Wilke, has billed itself as \u201cAmerica\u2019s answer to Shenzhen.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Other deals \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Bedrock Robotics<\/strong> raised $600 million in a funding round that values the autonomous vehicle technology startup at $4.1 billion. CapitalG and Emergence Capital co-led the Series C round. New investors US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), Bessemer Venture Partners, and Temasek participated in the round, alongside existing investors 8VC, Georgian, Valor Equity Partners, Xora, Eclipse, Perry Creek Capital, and Nvidia.<\/p>\n DoorDash<\/strong> has agreed to acquire Instacart for $17 billion. Meanwhile, DoorDash noted in its third-quarter earnings that it has, so far, only received a few hundred orders from AI agents.<\/p>\n PreScalar<\/strong>, a San Francisco-based startup developing software and testing infrastructure for factories, raised $7 million in seed funding co-led by Dynamo Ventures and BMW i Ventures, with participation from Blue Wire Capital, Uplift Ventures, and Antler. The startup was founded last year by a trio who had stints at Cruise, Google, Rivian, and Waymo.\u00a0<\/p>\n Elroy Air<\/strong>, a startup developing autonomous heavy-cargo drones for defense, rapid response, and commercial logistics, hired Jeremy Hux as its CFO in preparation for going public.<\/p>\n Ford<\/strong> announced two new EV chargers that will allow its forthcoming Fathom pickup truck to serve as a battery capable of delivering power to the home or grid.<\/p>\n GM is embracing hybrids now. Times sure have changed! The U.S. automaker is also trying to move past the driver data-selling controversy from several years ago. GM agreed to a $220 million settlement with 36 states (its settlement with California and the Federal Trade Commission happened earlier) to settle allegations that it illegally sold private driving behavior and location information to data brokers.<\/p>\n Kodiak AI<\/strong> will deliver 75 self-driving trucks to freight company DTL Transport starting in 2028. It\u2019s the company\u2019s first binding commercial deal for driverless big rigs that will run on public highways.<\/p>\n Rivian<\/strong> reported its third-quarter earnings, and a few items stood out to us. For one, the new R2 has been successful enough for the company to raise its 2026 delivery guidance by a couple thousands vehicles. Rivian, which had previously expected to deliver between 65,000 and 70,000 EVs this year, bumped up that floor to 67,000. But here is another potentially lucrative development: The $5.8 billion joint venture between Rivian and Volkswagen Group <\/strong>is expanding to include AI assistants. No word yet on whether that means VW will invest even more money into Rivian.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tesla<\/strong> turns to Turo to boost adoption of Full Self-Driving (Supervised).<\/p>\n Waymo<\/strong> and Toyota<\/strong> have locked in a manufacturing partnership, officially moving them past the \u201cwe\u2019re just talking\u201d phase. Toyota will manufacture AV-ready bZ4X vehicles \u2014 and integrate Waymo\u2019s self-driving system \u2014 at its factory in Japan. The vehicles will be used for robotaxi services in Japan, the U.K., and other international markets. Importantly, the companies hinted that this could eventually lead to a licensing deal in which Waymo AV tech is in personally owned vehicles.<\/p>\n Last call for founders, investors, and builders based in and around the Boston area. The Founder Summit \u2014 a one-day event in Boston \u2014 will be held on November 4. And I will be there! This event is really geared toward startup founders, aspiring founders, and investors. Attendees can expect advice-driven talks from VCs and serial founders, plus lots of chances to network.\u00a0<\/p>\n For my TechCrunch Mobility readers, here is a 30% discount on tickets. Click this link and use the code mobility30<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/11\/01\/techcrunch-mobility-a-new-bigger-av-boom-is-here\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/robotaxi-illustration.jpg?resize=1200,1058″] Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free \u2014 just click TechCrunch Mobility! I\u2019ve joked here and on the Equity and Autonocast podcasts that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,62],"class_list":["post-2234839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-techcrunch-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2234839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2234839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2234839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2234839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2234839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2234839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/trucks-vc-av-wave.png?w=680\")
Deals!<\/h2>\n
![\"money](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/money-the-station.png?w=680\")
Notable reads and other tidbits<\/h2>\n
![](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/the-station-ride-hailing1.png?w=680\")
One more thing \u2026<\/h2>\n