Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. This week we are focusing on the discussions from the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. The event featured many high-profile executives and founders working on the future of transportation.
Some notable participants included Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana, Slate CEO Chris Barman, Nuro co-CEO and founder Dave Ferguson, Uber CPO Sachin Kansal, Wayve founder and CEO Alex Kendall, and Kodiak AI founder and CEO Don Burnette. Videos of these interviews will be posted online in the coming week.
The interview with Slate CEO Chris Barman is already available. If you watch it, pay attention to her comments about the accessories that can be added to any Slate electric vehicle. The startup will design, manufacture, and sell accessories, but it also plans to share data so owners can make their own and even sell them to other owners.
Chris Barman stated that they will release all the data information and anybody can 3D print their own accessories. She said they want individuals to feel they do not have to come to Slate directly, and they aim to create an ecosystem on their website marketplace. When asked if Slate would take a cut on accessories sold through its marketplace, Barman confirmed they would take a fee when working with creators. She quickly added that creators can choose to sell elsewhere without Slate taking a cut, such as on Etsy, emphasizing the power of choice for the creators.
We also invite you to join the waitlist for Disrupt 2026 to be first in line for early bird tickets. Past events have featured leaders from Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla. These are part of over 250 industry leaders driving more than 200 sessions designed to fuel your growth. You can also meet hundreds of startups innovating across every sector. The event will be in San Francisco from October 13 to 15, 2026.
Among other highlights, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said he was happy to have Waymo on the city’s streets and welcomed other companies to use San Francisco as a testbed for autonomous vehicle technology. Additionally, the transportation-focused company Glīd was declared the winner of Startup Battlefield 2025.
In other news, a demo ride was taken through the streets of San Francisco in a Wayve vehicle. Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana made several interesting comments on stage. She stated that she believes other companies working on autonomous vehicles need to do more to prove their technology is safe. She also suggested that the public might accept a death caused by a robotaxi in the face of the promise of greater overall safety. Mawakana also said Waymo will pursue people who vandalize its vehicles and that the company has rejected government requests for video from its vehicles, adding they will continue to reject requests that are overly broad.
Here is a look at some recent deals. A company called i6, which developed digital fuel management for aviation, raised twenty million dollars in Series B funding led by Yttrium. International Airlines Group, World Kinect, and Shell Ventures also joined the round.
IntrCity SmartBus, a tech-enabled intercity bus platform in India, raised thirty million dollars in funding to expand its network across smaller cities and towns. The all-equity Series D round was led by A91 Partners and values the startup at one hundred forty million dollars post-money.
Navan, the corporate travel and expense platform, finished its first day of trading on the Nasdaq down twenty percent from its twenty-five dollar IPO price. This resulted in a valuation of about four point seven billion dollars.
Pavewise, a road construction tech startup, raised two point five million dollars in a seed round led by C2 Ventures. Other investors included Connectic, Service Provider Capital, Geoff Judge, former Ryvit CEO Tom Stemm, M25, gener8tor 1889, and Broadwater Capital.
Ridepanda, an e-bike and scooter fleet startup that provides subscriptions to companies, raised twelve point six million dollars in a Series A funding round led by Bikeleasing Group of Germany. Other investors included Blackhorn Ventures, Yamaha Motor Ventures, Proeza Ventures, and Somersault Ventures.
Here are some other notable reads and tidbits. Aurora added a six hundred mile driverless route from Fort Worth, Texas, to El Paso. This is the company’s second route for its self-driving trucks. The company also revealed details on its next-generation hardware.
The market in India, which BlaBlaCar once walked away from, is now its biggest. General Motors is laying off thousands of workers across multiple electric vehicle and battery plants in the United States.
Luminar is experiencing new struggles since the board pushed out its founder and CEO Austin Russell. A new regulatory filing warns the company will run out of cash in early 2026, and it has announced a twenty-five percent cut to its workforce. The company also said its CFO has left.
Nvidia made transportation news with a partnership involving Stellantis, Uber, and Foxconn to jointly develop autonomous vehicles. The news was part of a broader announcement around Nvidia’s new Drive AGX Hyperion 10 autonomous vehicle development platform and Nvidia Drive software. Several automakers, suppliers, and robotaxi companies plan to use this platform, including Lucid, Mercedes, and Stellantis. The platform is part of Uber’s goal to scale its global autonomous fleet to one hundred thousand vehicles over time, starting in 2027.
Wayve founder Alex Kendall said backstage that he was very excited about the Hyperion platform. He, along with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, have been encouraging automakers to use it. He expressed a desire to see more manufacturers building vehicles with the Hyperion architecture to unlock further development.
Uber has chosen San Francisco to launch a premium robotaxi service. The service will use Lucid Motors’ all-electric Gravity SUVs equipped with self-driving technology developed by Nuro, starting in 2026. This move puts the ride-hailing giant in direct competition with Waymo. It is worth noting that Uber is partnering with Waymo in other cities.
Waabi shared details of a new autonomous truck made in partnership with Volvo during TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
In last week’s newsletter, we conducted a poll about autonomous vehicle business models. We asked what the best business model is for longer haul applications of autonomous vehicle technology. The choices were self-driving Class 8 trucks traveling more than five hundred miles on highways or middle-mile delivery using autonomous trucks traveling between warehouses and distribution centers.
Readers overwhelmingly picked the big rig option with sixty-two point five percent of the vote. To participate in future polls, you can sign up for the Mobility newsletter.
Finally, here is a photo of me and senior reporter Sean O’Kane. This is a full-circle moment for us. O’Kane, with some assistance from me, spent months working on a story about how Jeff Bezos was backing a little-known startup called Slate. Since then, Slate has shared its plans to make a cheaper electric truck and has received a lot of attention for it. Slate CEO Chris Barman not only came to our stage for an interview but also brought a TechCrunch-wrapped truck.