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I’ve joked right here and on the Fairness and Autonocast podcasts that the autonomous car trade feels loads like 2016, a minimum of by way of the buzziness surrounding the sector.
However a current dialog with Vans VC accomplice Puneeth Meruva has me rethinking that comparability. There’s proof that 2026 is even hotter — a minimum of by sure measures — than these frothy dealmaking days of 2016 and 2017.
Vans VC, which makes a speciality of early-stage investing, has fielded pitches from 81 new autonomous car startups to this point in 2026 — two-thirds greater than final 12 months and sufficient to surpass the growth years of a decade in the past. The VC agency argues in a brand new blog post that we’re within the midst of a second, even larger AV wave fueled by technological breakthroughs. Sure, I’m speaking about AI.
“For a very long time AV firms had been making an attempt to go from what was AV 1.0 to AV 2.0, which is type of this holy grail end-to-end structure for AVs,” Meruva advised me. “And I feel the muse fashions now present a technical structure that makes these end-to-end methods potential.”
These foundational fashions are significantly good at generalizing throughout completely different environments and situations, probably making AVs cheaper and quicker to deploy. The arrival of highly effective open supply fashions like Nvidia’s Alpamayo and Qwen’s general-purpose vision-language-action fashions has made it even simpler for startups to get off the bottom.
The barrier to entry is decrease than ever earlier than. Meruva mentioned Vans is persistently seeing startups deploy inside a couple of months and with lower than $1 million raised. (And whereas Meruva wouldn’t title names, the agency has invested in a few of them.)
Of those 81 startups that pitched Vans VC, I mistakenly assumed most can be making use of their AV tech to building, warehouse, agriculture, and mining. And sure, these had been within the combine. However what shocked me was the rising variety of startups pitching pure-play robotaxi companies. And lots of are positioning themselves as direct opponents to Waymo.
As wild and galaxy brain-thinking as which will sound, Meruva thinks there may be room for smaller gamers.
“On this world, smaller, extra area of interest autonomy firms can compete — perhaps they’re not competing with Waymo on a worldwide scale, however perhaps they’re competing in particular areas or particular varieties of routes,” he mentioned.
And Meruva doesn’t see the tempo flattening. He expects much more AV startups to pitch the agency subsequent 12 months.
Offers!
Common readers of this text know we’ve been carefully following Slate Auto — breaking the unique story on Jeff Bezos’ investment method again in April 2025. However the firm it spun out of is what obtained our consideration this week.
Re:Construct, a Massachusetts-based manufacturing accelerator, raised $2.1 billion to “broaden Re:Construct’s capability to fabricate exhausting tech merchandise and launch new industrial startups.” The funding was led by Basic Catalyst and JPMorganChase’s Strategic Funding Group. Different traders weren’t disclosed.
The corporate, which was co-founded by Amazon’s former industrial CEO Jeff Wilke, has billed itself as “America’s reply to Shenzhen.”
Different offers …
Bedrock Robotics raised $600 million in a funding spherical that values the autonomous car expertise startup at $4.1 billion. CapitalG and Emergence Capital co-led the Sequence C spherical. New traders US Modern Know-how Fund (USIT), Bessemer Enterprise Companions, and Temasek participated within the spherical, alongside present traders 8VC, Georgian, Valor Fairness Companions, Xora, Eclipse, Perry Creek Capital, and Nvidia.
DoorDash has agreed to acquire Instacart for $17 billion. In the meantime, DoorDash famous in its third-quarter earnings that it has, to this point, solely obtained a couple of hundred orders from AI agents.
PreScalar, a San Francisco-based startup growing software program 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 based final 12 months by a trio who had stints at Cruise, Google, Rivian, and Waymo.
Notable reads and different tidbits
Elroy Air, a startup growing autonomous heavy-cargo drones for protection, speedy response, and industrial logistics, employed Jeremy Hux as its CFO in preparation for going public.
Ford introduced two new EV chargers that can enable its forthcoming Fathom pickup truck to function a battery able to delivering energy to the house or grid.
GM is embracing hybrids now. Instances certain have modified! The U.S. automaker can be making an attempt to maneuver previous the driving force data-selling controversy from a number of years in the past. GM agreed to a $220 million settlement with 36 states (its settlement with California and the Federal Commerce Fee occurred earlier) to settle allegations that it illegally offered non-public driving habits and site info to knowledge brokers.
Kodiak AI will ship 75 self-driving trucks to freight firm DTL Transport beginning in 2028. It’s the corporate’s first binding industrial deal for driverless massive rigs that can run on public highways.
Rivian reported its third-quarter earnings, and some gadgets stood out to us. For one, the brand new R2 has been profitable sufficient for the corporate to raise its 2026 delivery guidance by a pair hundreds autos. Rivian, which had beforehand anticipated to ship between 65,000 and 70,000 EVs this 12 months, bumped up that flooring to 67,000. However right here is one other probably profitable improvement: The $5.8 billion three way partnership between Rivian and Volkswagen Group is increasing to include AI assistants. No phrase but on whether or not meaning VW will make investments much more cash into Rivian.
Tesla turns to Turo to spice up adoption of Full Self-Driving (Supervised).
Waymo and Toyota have locked in a producing partnership, formally transferring them previous the “we’re simply speaking” part. Toyota will manufacture AV-ready bZ4X vehicles — and combine Waymo’s self-driving system — at its manufacturing facility in Japan. The autos can be used for robotaxi companies in Japan, the U.Okay., and different worldwide markets. Importantly, the businesses hinted that this might finally result in a licensing deal during which Waymo AV tech is in personally owned autos.
Yet another factor …
Final name for founders, traders, and builders based mostly in and across the Boston space. The Founder Summit — a one-day occasion in Boston — can be held on November 4. And I can be there! This occasion is actually geared towards startup founders, aspiring founders, and traders. Attendees can count on advice-driven talks from VCs and serial founders, plus a lot of possibilities to community.
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