Tech
TechCrunch Mobility: Is $16B enough to build a profitable robotaxi business?
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Waymo’s acceleration over the past 18 months is undeniable. The Alphabet-owned self-driving company now operates commercial robotaxi services in six markets, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, and Miami. It has plans to grow its fleet of driverless taxicabs this year to more than a dozen new cities internationally, including London and Tokyo.
And now it has $16 billion to fuel that expansion. Is it enough?
Talking to a few industry watchers, the answer kept landing in the squishy “sort of” and “it depends” territory.
First the bull case. Alphabet is clearly committed to ensuring Waymo’s success; the parent company is, and continues to be, the primary investor. Which means Waymo isn’t exposed like other AV startups that suddenly lost funding after their backers (often legacy automakers) got skittish or pivoted.
Its ridership and autonomous miles driven stats are also exploding and will likely continue in that trajectory unless it is derailed by regulators. (Waymo provides 400,000 rides every week across six major U.S. metropolitan areas, and in 2025 alone, it more than tripled its annual volume to 15 million rides.)
This doesn’t guarantee success, though, especially if the gauge is set to profitability. Waymo still must solve several problems, including cost and increasing attention from regulators (the company’s chief safety officer just testified in a Senate Commerce hearing). If Waymo wants to simply be the licensor of its AV tech, it will have to move away from being the operator, which means giving up some control. That’s hard with a nascent technology under scrutiny.
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And while some of you will fight me on this, it also lacks the in-house manufacturing that Tesla has. Yes, Waymo has automotive partners. But it doesn’t come with the same financial leverage or ability to drive down costs with scale.
Disagree? Send your argument to my email at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com.
A little bird
The investors behind the now-defunct EV startup Canoo were always mysterious — in fact, they were only revealed as part of a lawsuit. Six years ago, I received a tip to look into one of them in particular: David Stern. He had connections to Prince Andrew but was otherwise a ghost.
He was on my mind, though, as the Department of Justice started releasing its files on Jeffrey Epstein. My curiosity as to whether he would turn up in the documents was quickly overwhelmed by the fact that he was, in fact, a close business partner of the convicted sex offender. He brought Epstein investment opportunities from around the world, and in particular, pitched him on investing in Faraday Future, Lucid Motors, and Canoo during the go-go days of mobility funding. Read my story on Stern and Epstein’s relationship and how mobility startups were once in the mix.
— Sean O’Kane
Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.
Deals!
Autonomous vehicle technology is about more than just robotaxis — it is a difficult and costly business that only a handful of well-capitalized companies like Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox are pursuing. Many startup founders are applying the AV systems they’ve developed to other use cases, including off-road defense, trucking, forklifts, mining, and construction. Investors, anxious about missing out on the AV party, are jumping into these sectors.
Bedrock Robotics is the latest example of investor interest. The Silicon Valley autonomous vehicle technology startup, founded by veterans of Waymo and Segment, are developing a self-driving system that can be retrofitted onto construction equipment. And it just raised $270 million in Series B funding co-led by CapitalG and the Valor Atreides AI Fund. Other investors include Xora, 8VC, Eclipse, Emergence Capital, Perry Creek Capital, NVentures (Nvidia’s venture capital arm), Tishman Speyer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgian, Incharge Capital, C4 Ventures, and others.
Bedrock raised more than $350 million in a short time (the company was formed in 2024). And while that might not seem like a lot compared to the size of some seed rounds in the AI labs sector, it shows money is flowing into physical AI startups. I expect more deal flow; importantly I expect the startups focused on practical applications of automated driving systems to attract talent — if they can afford them. Bedrock, for instance, hired Vincent Gonguet, who previously led AI safety and alignment at Meta for all Llama models, as its head of evaluation. It also hired John Chu away from Waymo.
Keep an eye out for my interview with Bedrock Robotics co-founder and CEO Boris Sofman.
Other deals that got my attention this week …
German electric motor maker Additive Drives raised €25 million ($29.5 million) from Nordic Alpha Partners.
Autonomous underwater vehicles startup Apeiron Labs closed a $9.5 million Series A round led by Dyne Ventures, RA Capital Management Planetary Health, and S2G Investments. Assembly Ventures, Bay Bridge Ventures, and TFX Capital participated.
GoCab, the African mobility fintech startup, raised a $45 million financing round comprising $15 million in equity and $30 million in debt. The equity round was co-led by E3 Capital and Janngo Capital, with participation from KawiSafi Ventures and Cur8 Capital.
Mitra EV, a commercial EV fleet company in Los Angeles, raised $27 million in financing, including equity funding from lead investor Ultra Capital and a credit facility from S2G Investments.
Overland AI, a Seattle-based developer of self-driving systems designed for military operations, raised $100 million in a round led by 8VC. Other investors included Point72 Ventures, Ascend Venture Capital, Shasta Ventures, Overmatch Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, and StepStone Group.
Plug, the used EV marketplace, raised $20 million in a Series A led by Lightspeed with participation from Galvanize and existing investors Autotech Ventures, Leap Forward Ventures, and Renn Global.
R3 Robotics, a European startup that wants to automate the disassembly of EV systems at scale, raised €20 million ($23.6 million) in combination of grants and venture funding. The €14 million ($16.5 million) Series A funding was co-led by HG Ventures and Suma Capital. Oetker Collection, the European Innovation Council Fund (EIC Fund), and existing shareholders, including BONVENTURE, FlixFounders, and EIT Urban Mobility also participated.
Skyryse, an El Segundo, California-based aviation automation startup, has raised more than $300 million in a Series C investment. The round, led by Autopilot Ventures, pushes its valuation to $1.15 billion. Other investors include Fidelity Management & Research Company, ArrowMark Partners, Atreides Management LP, BAM Elevate, Baron Capital Group, Durable Capital Partners, Positive Sum, Qatar Investment Authority, RCM Private Markets Fund managed by Rokos Capital Management, and Woodline Partners.
Notable reads and other tidbits
China has banned concealed electronically actuated door handles popularized by Tesla. The ruling, published by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, says all new cars sold in the country must have mechanical releases on their door handles by January 1, 2027. There is chatter that Europe could soon follow.
Uber continues to make moves designed to make it competitive in the autonomous vehicle sector. The company has promoted Balaji Krishnamurthy, its VP of strategic finance and investor relations, to be its CFO. This may not seem connected to AVs, but it is. Krishnamurthy actively promotes the company’s autonomous ride-hailing partnerships and has a board seat at AV company Waabi. During the company’s Q4 call, he talked about AVs, saying the company would invest capital in its AV software partners, work with AV makers by investing equity or via offtake agreements, and “support our AV infrastructure partners.”
Meanwhile, a high-profile lawsuit against Uber has delivered a mixed verdict for the ride-hailing company, which was sued after a woman alleged she was raped by her Uber driver in November 2023. A jury determined Uber was liable as an apparent agent of the driver and awarded $8.5 million to the plaintiff. The jury rejected claims that Uber was liable for negligence or design defects and declined to award punitive damages. An Uber spokesperson, who emailed TechCrunch a statement, said the “verdict affirms that Uber acted responsibly and has invested meaningfully in rider safety. We will continue to put safety at the heart of everything we do.” Uber plans to appeal the decision.
One more thing …
Last week in our newsletter, we did a poll asking what the name or ticker of Elon Musk’s combined supercompany should be. Thanks to those who emailed their suggestions, many of which had space themes, like Galactic X (great one). As for the poll, the majority picked plain ol’ X.
That makes sense, considering Musk has often talked, and posted, about X, the everything app. About 50% voted for X, while 20.7% picked ELON, 17.2% selected SpaceAI, and 12.1% chose K2, a reference to one of the corporate entities created in January.
My pick? I think it will ultimately be X, and the company will include more than just SpaceX and xAI.
To participate in our polls, sign up for our newsletter!
Tech
Hacker stole £700,000 from UK energy company by redirecting payment
British oil and gas company Zephyr Energy says someone stole £700,000 (close to $1 million) from one of its U.S.-based subsidiaries by redirecting a payment meant for a contractor into a hacker-controlled account.
In a regulatory filing with the London Stock Exchange on Thursday, the company said it is “working with the corresponding banks and consultants to attempt to recover the diverted funds.”
While the company did not say how the incident occurred, hackers are known to break into email inboxes or accounting systems and use that access to alter bank account and routing numbers during the process of paying someone or clearing an invoice. Known as business email compromise attacks, the FBI said in its most recent annual report published on internet cybercrime earlier in April that these attacks remain one of the top sources of financial losses, totaling more than $3 billion in victim losses during 2025.
Zephyr says that its incident is contained and that its operations are running normally.
As for the attack itself, the company said it used “industry standard practices” for its tech and payment platforms, but said it has implemented “additional layers of security” following the incident.
A spokesperson for Zephyr did not return an email requesting comment about the incident.
(via The Register)
Tech
X brings back Voice Notes to X Chat
Posting Voice Notes publicly on X may no longer be possible, but you can now share audio messages within X’s direct messaging system, X Chat, once again. The social network announced late on Wednesday that support for Voice Notes is now available within its private messaging service.
The feature, which works in both one-on-one messages and group chats, is activated with a push of the voice input icon to the right of the chat’s text box. At launch, you have to continue to press the button to record the voice message, but we found that a press-and-hold gesture followed by a swipe up allows it to record without having to keep your finger on the button.
The new addition could make X Chat more competitive with other messaging apps, where recording audio voice notes has long been a standard option. This is particularly important to the company, given the recent spinout of X Chat as its own stand-alone app.
It could also assuage angry users who didn’t appreciate that the upgrade to X Chat removed the Voice Notes feature.
The move follows X’s recent beta tests of an X Chat app on iOS, which offers access to X’s upgraded DM feature. While the company claims that chats are end-to-end encrypted, security experts have warned that the service is less secure than other encrypted messaging apps, like Signal.
The introduction of the new app reflects a strategy change for the social network, as owner Elon Musk once said X would become an all-in-one super app, or “everything app.” Now, the company is looking to make pieces of its app available as their own experiences. X Money, X’s payments service, is also being tested as a separate app, for instance.
Voice Notes have been on X Chat’s roadmap for some time despite their temporary removal. When X first introduced its new chat platform in November, it said the audio feature would be “returning soon.”
Currently, the X Chat service also supports other features, like the ability to edit and delete messages, block or get notified of screenshots, share files, make voice and video calls, and set messages to automatically disappear.
Tech
Avec’s Tinder-style email app allows you to swipe through your inbox
Apps like Superhuman and Mimestream have tried to get people to inbox zero on the desktop. Now a new app called Avec for mobile devices, initially available on iOS, aims to get you through your inbox using Tinder-style swipe cards and voice-based replies.
By default, the left swipe adds the email to a pile that you can address later, and the right swipe adds it to the done (or archive) pile.
The email “stack” of cards also has a button at the bottom that lets you hold it to reply to emails using your voice. When you release the button after speaking, the transcription will show up as a draft. You can review the transcription for errors, make any necessary edits, and then send the email.
Avec said that while apps like Wispr Flow, Willow, and Monologue exist, they are constrained by Apple’s APIs, and users need to install them as a separate keyboard app to work. Meanwhile, Avec has the full context of your email, so it can understand names and apply better edits based on the tone of the email. Because of this context, the email app can understand your personal email style as well, the company said.
While managing your inbox, Avec lets you mark unimportant emails by swiping down. The email will learn from what’s put in the unimportant pile and can show it to you in a group instead of forcing you to triage these emails one by one.
While the card-based interface is Avec’s unique feature, it also offers a plain old list-based view.
The app was founded by Jonathan Unikowski, who previously worked at Replit in a product engineering role. Unikowski said he was thinking about building tools that he would use every day. He explored ideas like building a browser but eventually ended up with email.
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“It’s this thing that hasn’t changed for 25 years,” Unikowski told TechCrunch over a call. He said Gmail was the last big change in email, which has had long-term impacts on how email is managed. “It’s a big part of everyone’s life, no matter how much they hate it. And it seemed very clear to me that through a combination of really good design and, of course, the judicious use of these new AI tools, we could do much better.”
Avec is not alone in having this thought process. Apart from Superhuman, apps like Shortwave and Spike have tried different approaches to presenting email. In the last decade, Basecamp’s Hey has tried to “reinvent” email by becoming a new provider, but, as a paid service, it hasn’t reached the same scale as Gmail.
When I asked Unikowski about choosing mobile over desktop as a first place to launch an email client, he said that constraints on the platform can force creativity, and the phone is usually the place where people look at their emails.
“I really am a firm believer in this idea that constraints force creativity, and so you get away with a lot less on an iOS app. On phones, you have a very small screen [as compared to the desktop]. You don’t have a physical keyboard. So if you’re going to convince someone to install a new app, it needs to be really good. And for it to be really good, you need to be extremely inventive,” he said.
The app is currently available in the U.S. and is free to use for Gmail users. Support for Outlook is in the works. Unikowski said that the company plans to introduce paid tiers at some point, but it is still ideating about what features to include within that premium offering.
The company has raised $8.4 million in funding to date from investors, including Lightspeed and Haystack, with participation from individuals such as Replit CEO Amjad Masad, Replit’s head of AI Michele Catasta, Behance co-founder Scott Belsky, and Lenny Rachitsky.
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