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We’re mixing things up a bit this week to focus on what was said on, and off, the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. In short, it was a banger with a number of high-profile execs and founders working on the future of transportation.
Here are a few: 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 those interviews will be posted on our YouTube channel over the coming week.
The Slate Auto interview with Sean O’Kane and Chris Barman is already available. If you watch it, pay attention to Barman’s comments about the accessories that can be added to any Slate EV. The startup will design, make, and sell accessories, but it’s also going to share data so owners can make their own. And even sell it to other owners.
“We will release all of the data information on that and anybody can 3D print their own,” Barman said. “So we also want that individuals don’t feel they have to come to us. We want to create an ecosystem that’ll be on our website Slate marketplace.”
O’Kane then asked if Slate would take a cut on those accessories if creators add them to the Slate marketplace.
“Yeah, we’ll take some amount of fee when we work with them,” she said, quickly adding that creators can sell elsewhere (and without Slate taking a cut). “If they wanted to, they could choose to market it on Etsy. It’s their power of choice and what they do. It’s not as if we’re going to behold them to us.”
Among other highlights … San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie said he was happy to have Waymo on SF’s streets and welcomed other companies to use the city as a testbed for autonomous vehicle tech. And transportation-focused Glīd was declared the winner of Startup Battlefield 2025. Oh, and Sean O’Kane and I took a demo ride through the streets of San Francisco in a Wayve vehicle.
Plus, Mawakana made a number of interesting comments onstage, including that she believes other companies working on autonomous vehicles need to do more to prove their technology is safe and that in the face of the promise of greater safety, the public would accept a death caused by a robotaxi.
She also said Waymo will go after people who vandalize its vehicles and that the company has rejected government requests for video captured from its vehicles —adding that they will continue to reject those requests if they are “overly broad.”
Deals!
A company that developed digital fuel management for aviation, i6, raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Yttrium. International Airlines Group, World Kinect, and Shell Ventures joined.
IntrCity SmartBus, a tech-enabled intercity bus platform in India, raised $30 million in funding to expand its network across smaller cities and towns in the South Asian nation. The all-equity Series D round, led by A91 Partners, values the Noida-based startup at $140 million post-money.
Navan, the corporate travel and expense platform, finished its first day of trading on the Nasdaq down 20% from its $25 IPO price, resulting in a valuation of about $4.7 billion.
Pavewise, a road construction tech startup, raised $2.5 million in a seed round led by C2 Ventures. Other investors included Connectic, Service Provider Capital, Geoff Judge, the former CEO of Ryvit Tom Stemm, M25, gener8tor 1889, and Broadwater Capital.
Ridepanda, an e-bike and scooter fleet startup that provides subscriptions to companies, raised $12.6 million 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.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Aurora added a 600-mile driverless route from Fort Worth, Texas, to El Paso, the company’s second for its self-driving trucks. The company also revealed details on its next-generation hardware.
India, the market 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 a new round of struggles since the board pushed out its founder and CEO Austin Russell. A new regulatory filing warns that it will run out of cash in early 2026 and has announced a 25% cut to its workforce. The company also said its CFO has left.
Nvidia made a bit of transportation news this week, including a partnership with 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, which several automakers, suppliers, and robotaxi companies will use. That list includes Lucid, Mercedes, and Stellantis. The platform is part of Uber’s goal to scale its global autonomous fleet to 100,000 vehicles over time, starting in 2027.
Wayve’s Alex Kendall told me backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt that he was really excited about Hyperion and that he, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi,and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have been encouraging automakers to use it. “What we would love to see is more manufacturers building vehicles with the Hyperion architecture, because that unlocks everything we’re trying to do.”
Uber picked San Francisco to launch a premium robotaxi service that will use Lucid Motors’ all-electric Gravity SUVs equipped with self-driving tech developed by Nuro, in 2026 — a move that puts the ride-hailing giant in direct competition with Waymo. Reminder: 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.
One more thing …
In last week’s newsletter, we did a poll, digging deeper into the question of autonomous vehicle business models and asked: What is the best business model for “longer haul” applications of autonomous vehicle tech?
I offered two choices: self-driving Class 8 trucks traveling more than 500 miles on highways or middle-mile delivery, which is autonomous trucks traveling between warehouses and distribution centers.
Readers, you overwhelmingly picked the big rig option with 62.5% of the vote. (Remember, if you want to take place in our polls, sign up for the Mobility newsletter here.)
Let me leave you with one more shot. This photo, of me and senior reporter Sean O’Kane, is a bit of a full-circle moment for us. O’Kane, with a small assist from me, spent months working on a big scoop 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 received a lot of attention for it.
Slate CEO Chris Barman not only came onto our stage for an interview, but she also brought a TechCrunch-wrapped truck too.
