Who Gets the Spoils
TechCrunch Mobility reports that self-driving tech startup Nuro hired Michael Mancini as its chief financial officer, another reminder that the robotaxi race is still being managed from the top by finance people and corporate strategists. Mancini was previously CFO at Energy Recovery, Astranis Space Technologies, and Aerion Supersonic.
Stellantis, the automaker behind the Jeep and Ram brands, has tapped self-driving startup Wayve to bring hands-free driving to its vehicles in 2028. The company also unveiled its $70 billion turnaround plan, which includes 11 new models for North America and some Chryslers. The language is all about turnaround and expansion, but the machinery underneath is the same old hierarchy: giant firms, giant budgets, and workers and riders left to live with whatever gets rolled out.
Robotaxis Meet the Road
Waymo’s robotaxis are here, and yet they’re not. The newsletter describes the contradiction plainly: anyone walking around San Francisco could reasonably declare that robotaxis have arrived, but arrival at scale does not guarantee permanence. That is the gap between the marketing and the street-level reality.
Waymo paused operations in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio because its robotaxis are struggling to deal with heavy rain and flooded roads, specifically knowing when not to enter them. As the newsletter was being prepared, the company extended that to Austin and Nashville. The problem prompted Waymo to issue a recall last week. In the same week, Waymo halted robotaxi operations on freeways in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Miami as it works to improve performance in construction zones.
The article says the arrival of robotaxis is conditional and that launching commercially is not mission accomplished. Waymo, arguably the leader in commercial robotaxi ridership and fleet size, is in the thick of that process and that for every new city it enters or capability it unlocks, a new edge case is discovered. The apparatus keeps expanding, and the edge cases keep showing up like unpaid bills.
The Musk Web
The newsletter also turns to SpaceX and Elon Musk’s business universe, where the lines between companies are so tangled they barely pretend to be separate. The SpaceX IPO filing dropped this week, and Musk is deeply tied to Tesla. Tesla is a publicly traded company and does disclose financial transactions with other Musk-affiliated entities, and the new IPO filing does the same with more detail. Musk’s company xAI has merged with SpaceX, putting all of these transactions under one company.
SpaceX purchased $506 million of Tesla’s commercial energy storage products, called Megapack, in 2025, nearly a threefold increase from the previous year. SpaceX also bought $131 million of Cybertrucks last year, paid Musk’s infrastructure firm The Boring Company $1 million to construct tunnels in Bastrop, Texas, and Musk’s social media company X, which was acquired by xAI last year and has since merged with SpaceX, also spent $1 million leasing space from The Boring Company. Tesla’s investment in xAI was converted into an equity interest in SpaceX following SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI.
The newsletter says these costs will likely be eclipsed by two future SpaceX-Tesla projects: building Terafab, a chip-manufacturing facility, and Macrohard, an AI platform the two companies are developing that will use autonomous agents to augment the work of humans. It asks whether SpaceX and Tesla will merge.
Capital Keeps Circulating Upward
Other deals keep the funding machine humming. Aboard, a Southern California-based startup developing extended-range electric travel trailers, raised $13 million in a pre-Series A round led by Ondine Capital and Llama Ventures. The company hired Richard Kim, an automotive designer known for his work on the BMW i3 and i8 and as co-founder of the defunct EV startup Canoo, as a consultant.
Quartermaster, an Arlington, Virginia-based startup developing a distributed sensing network for ships, raised $43 million in a Series A funding round co-led by First Round Capital and Quiet Capital. May Mobility formed a strategic agreement with Ecarx, an automotive tech company backed by Geely founder Li Shufu. Under the deal, Ecarx will supply May Mobility with thousands of purpose-built robotaxi vehicles. The companies plan to partner with a third party to initially deploy the AVs next year and scale to commercialization by 2028. The total value of the project is estimated to be about $750 million over its entire duration.
Scapia, an Indian travel booking startup, raised $63 million in a funding round led by General Catalyst, with existing investors Peak XV Partners and Z47 also participating. Uber increased its stake and now owns 19.5% of German food delivery company Delivery Hero, Bloomberg reported.
The newsletter also notes that Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at MIT, shared his recent presentation on AI and how its future depends on human behavior, governance and trust. Lyft published a blog that lays out the company’s position on autonomous vehicles, saying that a ride-hailing service requires human drivers and robot ones. It says this reflects the realities of where robotaxis are in terms of scale and that robotaxis are not a part of daily life for most people in the United States.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) driver-assistance software is now available in Lithuania, the second European country to approve its use. A San Francisco doctor who sued Waymo because its identity-verification system misidentified him as a terrorist dropped the lawsuit after the company resolved the issue.
The newsletter closes with a note that the last time the author was in a Nissan Leaf was two years ago, when she test drove a 2024 Nissan Leaf SV Plus that cost $37,815 including the destination fee. She recently got back in a 2026 Nissan Leaf Platinum+, priced at $42,635 including destination charges and some special add-ons like two-tone paint and the floor mat package. The third-generation Leaf had an improved EPA estimated range of 259 miles, and some versions go above 300 miles. The new Leaf had a lighter, more modern interior cabin, and the top trim came with a wireless phone-charging pad, dimming panoramic roof, a heads-up display and a long, curved 14.3-inch central screen. The model also came standard with a 360-degree camera, wireless Apple CarPlay or Android Auto and adaptive cruise control.