THE BIG STORY: Also Just Raised $150 Million To Build Autonomous Delivery Vehicles, And It Won't Be The Last

Also, the micromobility company RJ Scaringe spun out of Rivian in 2025, closed a $150 million Series D this week, pushing its total raised past $450 million in under two years. The money funds a new line of autonomous delivery vehicles, and DoorDash signed on this week to help build and deploy them.

It's one more entry on a list that keeps getting longer. Tesla, Waymo, and now a Rivian-backed startup are all building different vehicles aimed at the same job, getting goods from a business to a customer autonomously. When that many well-funded companies are building toward the same outcome at the same time, it stops being a bet on the future and starts being a description of what is already happening.

That is the real story here, not one company's funding round. Autonomous delivery and commerce are not arriving someday. It is being built right now, by multiple companies.

The brands and property owners that are paying attention, will be the ones who get to run the next autonomous arrival on their own terms. Autolane's job is to make sure that whichever vehicle shows up, from whichever company, gets read, routed, and handled without slowing anyone down.

Image Source: Also

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AV ROUND UP

Nevada Just Cleared Tesla, Waymo, And Uber For 8,000 Robotaxis In One County. The Nevada Transportation Authority unanimously approved permits letting Tesla scale up to 5,000 robotaxis in Clark County, with Waymo and Uber each cleared for 1,000 more. Even Tesla's own chief engineer said the company will not hit 5,000 vehicles within a year, but a ceiling that high still changes how every operator, and every property, in the county has to plan.

Waymo Just Picked Munich For Its First Stop Outside The US. Waymo confirmed it will begin testing in Munich this year, with a full public robotaxi launch targeted for 2027. This will be its first market outside the United States. Cities built around centuries-old streets and an entirely different set of curb rules are about to get their own introduction to what every US market has already been adjusting to.

San Jose Is Writing Rules For Delivery Robots After Letting Them Roll Without Any. Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics have had 35 cooler-sized bots running on San Jose sidewalks since April with no formal rules, and the city is now moving to require year-long permits and a 5-mph sidewalk speed cap ahead of a September council vote. DoorDash is already bringing something bigger into the mix, a five-foot bot called Dot built for bike lanes at up to 20 mph, and residents are asking the obvious question before the rules even catch up to what's already rolling.

THIS WEEK ON LINKEDIN

Avride Posted Two Hours Of Uncut Autonomous Driving Through Austin

Avride, the autonomous vehicle company backed by Uber and Nebius already testing in Austin, posted a two hour, unedited drive through the city this week. No highlight reel, no jump cuts, just one continuous stretch of driving handed straight to whoever wants to watch all of it. Most companies show thirty seconds of the smoothest turn of the week. Two hours uncut is a company betting the boring stretches prove more than the exciting ones.

Watch Avride's video on LinkedIn and let us know what you think. Avride Linkedin video

THE LAST 50 FT

Episode 18 is live, and it's a good one. Van Tucker, Head of AI at CMG, joined Ben and Cam this week to trace the ride from building a BMX website as a kid to becoming the AI Wrangler running strategy today, plus how he thinks about lean teams moving fast with AI and what pulled him toward Autolane. 🎧

Listen on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

THE AUTOCOMM BRIEF TAKE

A Rivian spinoff just proved that autonomous delivery robots are becoming their own well-capitalized category, not a side bet. Nevada proved regulators are willing to permit thousands of robotaxis at once. Waymo proved this is no longer a US-only story. Every one of those is a different company moving at a different speed toward the same place, a curb that has to sort out who is arriving, in what, and why all autonomously

The properties treating this as a an oppurtunity to plan for next quarter are going to be a lot less rattled than the ones still treating it as a someday problem, because someday just got several new vehicle types attached to it.

The lane is changing. Let's make sure it leads somewhere worth going. 🏁

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