Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! 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 <head>6 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. Techcrunch event Boston, MA | June 23, 2026 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 Image Credits:Bryce Durbin 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! Image Credits:Bryce Durbin 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 e