Tech
TechCrunch Mobility: Uber everywhere, all at once
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If you haven’t noticed, Uber is suddenly everywhere, at least when it comes to autonomous vehicles. The company sold off Uber ATG, its in-house autonomous vehicle development unit, back in 2020. Uber shed a number of its moonshots — although it maintained an equity stake in all of them — so it could focus on its core businesses of delivery and ride-hailing.
But Uber never gave up entirely on AVs. It’s spent the past two years locking up partnerships with dozens of autonomous vehicle technology companies across delivery, drones, trucking, and robotaxis. It has taken a worldview, too, making agreements with Chinese companies to launch robotaxis in Europe and the Middle East, as well as startups like U.K.-based Wayve.
And now there is another one with Rivian. The TL;DR of the deal is Uber will make an initial $300 million investment in Rivian and will buy 10,000 fully autonomous R2 robotaxis ahead of a planned rollout in San Francisco and Miami in 2028. Uber has the option to buy up to 40,000 more starting in 2030. This fleet will be exclusively available on Uber’s network.
Here’s how I am thinking about this deal. While the total deal could be as high as $1.25 billion, Uber’s initial outlay is relatively small. And the risk ratio is heavily weighted toward Rivian. It’s also the only deal that Uber has made in which the company is the developer of the self-driving system and the vehicle manufacturer.
Rivian hasn’t started producing the R2 SUV yet, nor has it tested and deployed a self-driving system designed for robotaxis. To raise the hurdle even higher, the robotaxi is supposed to be built in Rivian’s Georgia factory, which is still under construction.
And the EV maker has already made at least one sacrifice in hopes of pulling it off. Rivian said it no longer expects to meet its profitability goal in 2027 because of how much money it is spending on its autonomy efforts.
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A little bird
Speaking of Uber, a little bird hinted that the ride-hailing company might have been in talks with Rivian for its robotaxi deal for quite a long time. One person directly familiar with both companies told me a deal like this wouldn’t happen overnight. After I asked for more specifics, I got a question in return: “Does RJ strike you as someone who has a strategic horizon that short?” Touché!
Got a tip for us? Contact Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or via Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.
Deals!
Like Uber, Nvidia is everywhere. Or at least wants to be. The company has made numerous investments — either direct cash injections or in-kind chip deals — in autonomous vehicle technology companies. And it’s also locking up partnerships with automakers — as we saw this week during its GTC conference — in a bid to sell its autonomous vehicle development platform called Nvidia Drive Hyperion.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced onstage deals — either new or expanded — with BYD, Geely, Hyundai, and Nissan for its AV development platform. GM, Mercedes-Benz, and Toyota have already signed deals with Nvidia to use the platform.
Nvidia has been making deals with automakers for years, but the pace and specificity of AVs is worth noting.
“The ChatGPT moment of self-driving cars has arrived. We now know we could successfully autonomously drive cars,” Huang said during his GTC keynote, noting that altogether the four automakers build 18 million cars each year.
Other deals that got my attention …
Advanced Navigation, an Australian startup developing navigation and autonomous systems, raised $110 million in a Series C funding round led by Airtree Ventures, with strategic participation from Quadrant Private Equity and the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC).
Arc Boat Company, the Los Angeles electric boat startup, raised $50 million in a Series C funding round from Eclipse, a16z, Menlo Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Necessary Ventures, and Offline Ventures.
BusRight, the school bus routing and technology startup, raised more than $30 million in a round led by Volition Capital.
Jeff Bezos is reportedly raising $100 billion for a new fund that will focus on buying up companies in major industrial sectors — like automotive and aerospace. The plan is to then modernize these companies using AI models developed by Bezos’ new startup Project Prometheus.
Rivr, a Zurich-based autonomous robotics startup known for its stair-climbing delivery robot, was acquired by Amazon. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Trevor Milton, the founder of the now-bankrupt electric truck startup Nikola who was pardoned by President Trump, is trying to raise $1 billion for AI-powered planes.
Zenobē Energy has purchased Revolv, a San Francisco-based fleet charging startup, for an undisclosed amount.
Notable reads and other tidbits
A cyberattack on U.S. vehicle breathalyzer company Intoxalock has left drivers across the United States stranded and unable to start their vehicles.
Kodiak has expanded commercial autonomous freight operations to the Dallas-El Paso corridor. This is the company’s second major route and a core part of its network expansion roadmap, according to COO Michael Wiesinger.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration upgraded its investigation into the performance of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software in low-visibility conditions. The probe has now been escalated to an “engineering analysis,” its highest level of scrutiny and a required step before the agency tells a company to issue a recall.
One more thing …
I mentioned in last week’s edition to keep an eye out for my interview with Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe. We covered a lot of ground and I found his comments about robotics particularly interesting. To summarize, Scaringe thinks companies are approaching industrial robotics all wrong. His new startup, Mind Robotics, is going to do things differently and focus more on robotic hands and steering clear of building robots that can do back flips.
As Scaringe told me: “I think what’s missed in industrial [robotics] and this is one of the things we really see clearly, is the work happens with the hands. So, the hands are very, very important. Everything else, from a robotic system point of view, is to get the hands to the right place. And so the ability for the robots to do really complex motions, like, let’s say, like a back flip, that actually just means the robot has a lot of unnecessary complexity in it for the vast majority of tasks.” You can read the interview here.
Tech
Anthropic releases Opus 4.8 with new ‘dynamic workflow’ tool
On Thursday, Anthropic released Opus 4.8, the newest version of its most advanced publicly available model. The model is available everywhere, with standard pricing at the same level as the previous Opus release.
The new model comes just 41 days after Opus 4.7 was released, a much faster upgrade cycle than normal for Anthropic. (The most recent Sonnet and Haiku models are three and seven months old, respectively.) The fast turnaround may have something to do with the chilly reception to Opus 4.7, which some users found disappointing.
That interval has also seen significant new releases for OpenAI’s Codex and Google’s Gemini Flash model, increasing the pressure on Anthropic to keep pace.
Opus 4.8 comes with the expected best-in-class benchmark results, but there’s also particular attention to how the model manages bad or uncertain data. In the launch post, Anthropic’s early testers found that the new model is “more likely to flag uncertainties about its work and less likely to make unsupported claims.”
Echoing this point, a testimonial from Bridgewater associates said the biggest difference in the upgrade was “Opus 4.8’s tendency to proactively flag issues with the inputs and outputs of an analysis, something other models routinely missed and left to the users to catch.”
Together with the new model, Anthropic launched a feature called Dynamic Workflows, which will be available in research preview. The system is designed to help larger models like Opus manage complex tasks across hundreds of parallel subagents.
“Claude Code alongside Opus 4.8 can now carry out codebase-scale migrations across hundreds of thousands of lines of code from kickoff to merge, with the existing test suite as its bar,” the post explains.
Anthropic is still holding back its most advanced Mythos model after a tentative preview last month raised cybersecurity concerns. However, the company hinted in today’s Opus release that the Mythos preview period might soon end, once necessary safeguards are complete.
“We’re making swift progress on developing these safeguards and expect to be able to bring Mythos-class models to all our customers in the coming weeks,” the company wrote.
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Tech
Corgi announces $106M raise at $2.6B valuation — double what it was worth 3 weeks ago
Insurance tech Corgi on Thursday announced a $106 million Series B1 raise, valuing the company at $2.6 billion, just three weeks after announcing a $160 million Series B at a $1.3 billion valuation and four months after its $108 million Series A. The company offers insurance, working specifically with startups in areas like tech, cyber, and general liability; it counts Deel and Artisan among its customers.
Even in the current go-go dealmaking environment, that sequencing is remarkable. While startups raising back-to-back rounds at steep step-ups have become almost routine, a company whose valuation doubles in three weeks is unusual enough to raise questions, particularly given the investor set in both rounds is the same.
Asked what material event justified that kind of jump in such a short window, investor Kanyi Maqubela of Kindred Ventures cited the company’s momentum. It’s an explanation may satisfy some, but the practice more generally is starting to attract scrutiny in LP circles. “There’s growing distrust of internal markups,” said one LP who backs numerous venture funds and asked not to be named. Said this person of exit mechanisms specifically, “[I]f a company [is] just getting re-priced upward with no real liquidity event, LPs notice.”
The specific concern is that a fund that invests at one valuation, then marks it up three weeks later can make portfolio performance look stronger on paper than the underlying business may justify.
In this case, Maqubela suggested, that’s not an issue for Kindred’s limited partners, nor for Corgi’s other investors, which include Prime Capital, Leblon Capital, Alumni Ventures, and Y Combinator.
“LPs really like exits above all,” Maqubela said in a message to TechCrunch. “They discount the value of markups since those aren’t always reflective of reality.” He added that in this case, revenue growth rationalized the new round.
Founded in 2024 by Emily Yuan and Nico Laqua, Corgi says it’s building coverage for what it calls “newer categories” of risk while also addressing an often underserved market among legacy insurance carriers — startups and the unique liability problems they face, including those related to AI.
“Corgi covers anything from when an AI system causes financial loss, misinformation, operational failures, or compliance issues,” Laqua told TechCrunch. “Many legacy policies either exclude these risks or handle them ambiguously.
Corgi is not alone in the insurtech market; Vouch, which is backed by Y Combinator, operates in a similar space.
When asked about the back-to-back rounds, Laqua said that insurance is a “highly capital-intensive industry,” and that “demand has accelerated quickly across new product lines and partnerships.” Building an AI-native platform compounds those costs further.
“We’re best known for our business insurance products, but the additional capital will be used to expand into new insurance categories, scale the AI underwriting platform, grow embedded distribution partnerships, and continue growing our team,” Laqua said.
Corgi has now raised $378 million in total funding from its investors.
Correction: The title of this headline originally misstated the valuation due to an editing error.
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Tech
Startup Battlefield 200 application deadline extended to June 8 after overwhelming demand
Founders, the battlefield is still open, but not for much longer.
After overwhelming demand from founders around the world, TechCrunch has extended the Startup Battlefield 200 application deadline to June 8. If you thought you missed your opportunity to pitch live on the Disrupt Stage in October at San Francisco’s Moscone West, this is your final chance to step into one of tech’s most competitive startup arenas.
Nominate a standout startup or submit your application before the deadline.
What is Startup Battlefield 200?
Startup Battlefield 200 is where ambitious early-stage startups go from unknown to impossible to ignore. Selected founders will take the spotlight at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, pitching live in front of elite investors, influential media, and the global startup ecosystem. One startup will walk away with $100,000 in equity-free funding, but every company selected gains visibility that can reshape its trajectory.
More than 1,700 startups have participated in Startup Battlefield over the years. Together, they’ve raised more than $32 billion and produced over 250 exits, including acquisitions by companies like Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Uber, and Amazon.
This is the same competition that helped launch companies like Dropbox, Discord, Mint, Fitbit, and Trello. More than 1,500 startups have competed in Startup Battlefield, and many have gone on to become category-defining businesses.
Why founders are still racing to apply
Competition for Startup Battlefield 200 has intensified as founders look for ways to stand out in a crowded fundraising environment. The extension gives more startups the opportunity to enter, but expectations are higher than ever.
Selected startups receive:
- A free exhibit table for all three days of Disrupt.
- Four complimentary Disrupt passes.
- Branding and visibility inside the Disrupt event app.
- Press exposure and lead-generation opportunities.
- Access to founder-only masterclasses.
- The opportunity to pitch live on the Disrupt Stage.
- Direct feedback from leading venture capitalists.
- A chance to win $100,000 in equity-free funding.
Who should apply
TechCrunch is looking for bold early-stage startups with a working MVP and a vision capable of disrupting an industry. Bootstrapped, pre-seed, and seed-stage startups are encouraged to apply. Select Series A startups in capital-intensive sectors may also qualify.
If you are building something category-changing, this is your chance to prove it on one of the biggest stages in tech.
The clock is still ticking
The deadline extension was driven by overwhelming demand, but the battlefield will not stay open forever. Thousands of startups are competing for a limited number of spots, and every application is reviewed closely by the TechCrunch team.
This is your opportunity to get in front of investors, customers, media, and future partners all in one place. Nominate or apply before June 8 and fight for your place among the next generation of breakout startups.
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