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Remember final week when Aurora met a significant milestone — simply squeaking by beneath its personal deadline — and launched a driverless self-driving truck service? Welp, this week Aurora made headlines once more, however for a shocking change in management.
Co-founder Sterling Anderson, who has been chief product officer, is resigning from his place and the board. No actual phrase on what prompted his resignation, past some feedback he made through the firm’s Q1 earnings name. “Leaving Aurora is likely one of the most troublesome choices I’ve ever made, particularly given the thrilling stage Aurora is at,” he mentioned. “This is exactly what gave me the arrogance that now could be the fitting time.”
He didn’t say precisely the place he was going, both, besides that it is going to be an “thrilling exterior alternative in a senior management function at an iconic international firm.”
I’ll allow you to all place your bets.
Aurora is urgent on with out Anderson. The firm introduced throughout its earnings name that it’s going to begin sending its self-driving vans out at night time and through opposed climate circumstances like rain or heavy wind by the second half of 2025. The firm additionally plans to develop its driverless trucking route past Dallas to Houston, and into El Paso and Phoenix.
Just a little chicken
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It’s not day-after-day a public firm reverses course and goes non-public. But then once more, these aren’t regular instances. Especially for any firm caught up within the U.S.-China commerce battle.
Take Zeekr, for example. One yr in the past, the Chinese EV firm debuted on the New York Stock Exchange. Now, guardian firm Geely Auto needs to take Zeekr non-public in response to the Trump administration’s concept to kick Chinese corporations off American inventory exchanges.
Other offers that obtained my consideration …
Bosch Ventures has a brand new $270 million fund that may proceed its custom of investing in deep tech startups. Managing director Ingo Ramesohl informed TechCrunch the plan is to place extra of its cash into North American startups.
Investors who beforehand backed Indian Uber rival BluSmart have proposed a plan to inject one other $30 million into the struggling cab-hailing startup, which abruptly halted operations final month. But there’s a catch.
Breathe, a battery software program startup, raised $21 million in a Series B spherical led by Kinnevik Online AB, the corporate completely informed TechCrunch. Lowercarbon Capital and Volvo Cars Tech Fund participated.
DoorDash introduced two main acquisitions because it expands into Europe. The firm agreed to purchase its U.Okay. rival Deliveroo for about £2.9 billion (round $3.87 billion) and individually mentioned it’s shopping for SevenRooms — which supplies CRM, advertising and marketing, and operations software program to assist eating places, accommodations, and public venues with reservations and visitor administration — for $1.2 billion in money.
Meanwhile, Uber was busy this week, buying corporations and investing in them.
Uber elevated its funding into Chinese autonomous automobile firm WeRide by $100 million as a part of an expanded partnership deal to deliver the service to a different 15 cities over the following 5 years. In a separate deal, Uber additionally acquired an 85% controlling stake in Trendyol Go, the web meal and grocery supply enterprise based mostly in Istanbul, for about $700 million in money.
Notable reads and different tidbits
Autonomous automobiles
Here’s a personnel change I didn’t anticipate. Mo Elshenawy, the previous president and CTO of now-shuttered self-driving automobile firm Cruise, was simply named the chief expertise officer at telehealth and wellness firm Hims & Hers. I spoke to Hims & Hers co-founder and CEO Andrew Dudum, and he mentioned he particularly targeted on the AV trade to search out the following CTO. Here’s why.
Nuro has began testing its AV tech on the Las Vegas Strip. I not too long ago sat down with co-founder and president Dave Ferguson. Stay tuned for an replace on why the corporate shifted its enterprise mannequin.
Tesla‘s “Robotaxi” and “Cybercab” logos have hit a number of roadblocks. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied Tesla’s try and trademark the time period “Robotaxi” in reference to its automobiles as a result of it’s too generic. Meanwhile, purposes from Tesla for the trademark on the time period “Cybercab” had been halted due to corporations pursuing related “Cyber” logos.
Uber locked up partnerships with three Chinese autonomous automobile corporations — Pony AI, Momenta, and WeRide — in a bid to gobble up robotaxi market share within the Middle East and Europe. Footnote: These offers are to not function in China.
Waymo introduced it has a brand new 239,000-square-foot manufacturing facility within the Phoenix suburb of Mesa by a take care of Magna to construct greater than 2,000 autonomous Jaguar I-Pace automobiles. That clearly obtained plenty of consideration. But I used to be most fascinated by lastly studying the dimensions of Waymo’s present industrial fleet, which is now 1,500.
Wayve is making the rounds on the high-profile government set. You may bear in mind the video of Bill Gates in considered one of Wayve’s autonomous take a look at automobiles. Now it’s Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson’s flip. P.S. Branson is a Wayve investor. BTW, Fortune Brainstorm held its AI convention in London, and Wayve CEO and co-founder Alex Kendall was there. He had some fascinating feedback in regards to the firm’s end-to-end strategy and Tesla’s Elon Musk.
Zoox paused its driverless testing program for greater than every week and issued a voluntary recall of its software program following a crash in Las Vegas.
Electric automobiles, charging, & batteries
The Cadillac Celestiq EV — yep, that monster — is right here, and contributor Emme Hall has ideas after spending a day behind the wheel.
It’s earnings season, and the U.S.-China commerce battle is beginning to depart a scratch on the paint of automakers in all places. And, effectively, I don’t assume we’ll have the ability to buff it out.
Ford and General Motors pulled their steerage for the yr, citing financial uncertainty associated to Trump’s tariffs. Meanwhile, Rivian mentioned it would doubtless ship fewer automobiles this yr (40,000 to 46,000 EVs) than beforehand forecasted as a consequence of tariffs and different regulatory adjustments. Reminder: The firm was already monitoring for its third straight yr with no quantity progress earlier than the steerage minimize. There was some excellent news for Rivian, although: It generated gross revenue (yeah I do know, gross revenue isn’t precisely my fave, both). But this met a contractual milestone that unlocked about $1 billion in funding from Volkswagen Group as a part of a three way partnership with the German automaker.
Ford is elevating the value of the all-electric Mustang Mach-E SUV and the Maverick pickup by as a lot as $2,000 as a result of import taxes Trump is inserting on automobiles made in Mexico.
Lucid Motors has been working by some high quality “hiccups” within the early phases of delivering its long-awaited electrical Gravity SUV.
Mitsubishi Motors is in talks with Foxconn to supply an electrical automobile mannequin the Japanese automaker plans to promote in Australia and New Zealand within the latter half of 2026.
Tesla gross sales proceed to hunch throughout Europe regardless of an April EV gross sales swell.
Future of flight
Joby Aviation appears to be selecting 2026 for its first industrial passenger service, in line with its first-quarter earnings report. The electrical vertical takeoff and touchdown startup-turned-SPAC was concentrating on 2025, then was stating “early 2026.” Now it’s simply 2026, which suggests it may not be early subsequent yr.
