Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.
The autonomous vehicle industry is years, and maybe even decades, from maturing. A Wild West quality still defines the sector, despite a steady stream of announcements that show marked progress. Two news items from this week illustrate this point of progress, possibility, and even a bit of peril from the ups and downs of the public market.
First is Gatik, an autonomous vehicle and logistics startup that applies its technology to middle-mile trucks. The startup 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 stated the company will add another 30 autonomous trucks to the fleet by the end of 2026.
This deal is notable not just for its fleet size. As Narang explained, the trucks will handle the full regional network for Loblaw. This means these third-generation autonomous trucks will operate on their own to pick up products from two distribution centers and make deliveries to over 300 retail stores. These stores represent multiple brands within the Loblaw umbrella. This is not a fixed-route pilot program. It is a commercial operation, and it is complex.
Next is Kodiak Robotics, another startup developing self-driving trucks for highway, industrial, and defense uses. The company began trading on Nasdaq this week under the tickers KDK and KDKRW. The company, now called Kodiak AI, went public via a merger with the special-purpose acquisition company Ares Acquisition Corporation II, an affiliate of Ares Management. The deal valued the startup at about two and a half billion dollars.
Kodiak raised two hundred seventy-five million dollars in financing. More than two hundred twelve million dollars came from certain institutional investors, including one hundred forty-five million dollars in PIPE funding and about sixty-three million dollars in trust cash from Ares. It should be noted the trust cash was smaller, as some SPAC investors redeemed their shares.
I spoke to founder and CEO Don Burnette the day before Kodiak’s debut about why he took the company public via a SPAC. It was a big moment for Burnette, whose family was on hand to watch him ring the bell. The stock was trading at about seven dollars and seventy cents on Friday, down about ten percent from its market open.
Burnette explained that building and scaling a transformative autonomous driving company is very capital intensive, and they were looking to access the public markets. When choosing between a traditional IPO or a SPAC, they considered all options and felt the SPAC route was the right decision for the company from a timing perspective.
Burnette is also quite bullish on defense. He stated that autonomy is the future of ground transportation broadly, noting the benefits within defense for logistics and reconnaissance operations for ground vehicles. He said defense requires unstructured autonomy, an area where Kodiak specializes.
A few weeks ago, we wrote about 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, we learned a wider reorganization of Supernal’s executive team was afoot, which Hyundai Motor Group has now confirmed.
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 vice president 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 former CEO and previously served as Supernal’s Head of Intelligent Systems.
Remember Moxion Power, the portable battery startup that raised one hundred ten million dollars before going bankrupt? The founders are back with a new startup called Anode Technology Company, which has designed a mobile battery and inverter for EV charging and supplying remote power to construction sites and live events. The startup just raised nine million dollars in seed funding in a round led by Eclipse Ventures. The partner who spearheaded the deal was previously Rivian’s chief growth officer, and his interest was sparked by his experience at Rivian.
Palo Alto-based venture capital firm Eclipse has been busy this year. The firm led the one hundred five million dollar round of Also, the micromobility startup that spun out of Rivian, and recently hired a longtime investor as partner and head of growth. The firm does not 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 include Rapido, a popular ride-hailing platform in India that competes with Uber. It doubled its valuation to two point three billion dollars following a secondary share sale by food delivery giant Swiggy. This share sale comes just weeks after Rapido began piloting food deliveries, edging into Swiggy’s core territory.
Telo, the tiny electric truck developer, raised twenty million dollars 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.
The administration is seeking up to a ten percent stake in Lithium Americas in exchange for renegotiating the repayment period of a two point twenty-six billion dollar Department of Energy loan. GM is a major investor in the Canadian company, which is developing a lithium mine in Nevada expected to be the largest in the Western Hemisphere.
Hackers have had quite an active week in the transportation sector. Stellantis confirmed a data breach involving customers’ personal information linked to a hack of its Salesforce database. Meanwhile, a hack that began last Friday and targeted check-in systems provided by Collins Aerospace caused delays at Brussels, Berlin, and Dublin airports, as well as London’s Heathrow. Authorities have arrested a man in connection to the ransomware attack. Finally, Jaguar Land Rover said 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 Sila started operations at its facility in Moses Lake, Washington, a milestone that could pave the way for longer-range, faster-charging electric vehicles. The factory is the first large-scale silicon anode factory in the West and will initially be capable of making enough battery materials for twenty thousand to fifty thousand electric vehicles. Future expansion could fulfill demand for as many as two and a half million vehicles.
Automakers continue to pull back on electric and electrified vehicles. Honda is ending U.S. production of its Acura ZDX electric vehicle that was being built by General Motors in Tennessee. Stellantis has canceled plans to produce a plug-in hybrid Jeep Gladiator in North America by the end of 2025.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened 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.
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 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.
Finally, there is proof of life from Luminar founder Austin Russell. You may remember Russell was mysteriously and suddenly replaced in May as CEO of the lidar company he created. The company never truly explained his departure, only that it resulted from a code of business conduct and ethics inquiry initiated by the board.
Russell has been silent. While he remains on Luminar’s board, he has not signed any company filings submitted since he was replaced. This week, he reappeared as the co-founder of a new company called Russell AI Labs. It is billed as a platform that backs and builds transformative AI and frontier technology companies.
His troubles at Luminar do not seem to have affected his ability to attract high-profile support. Russell’s co-founders are the chief technology officer and a board member at Mercedes-Benz Group AG, and a former managing director at Goldman Sachs who later joined SoftBank.
As part of its debut, Russell AI Labs announced it has taken a three hundred million dollar stake in agentic AI company Emergence AI.