TechCrunch Mobility: Uber is entering its assetmaxxing era

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Uber it seemed to be everywhere, at one time in the field of autonomous vehicle technology. The Financial Times has now put a number on it. The FT calculated that Uber has contributed more than $10 billion to buy autonomous vehicles and hold equity stakes in companies developing the technology, according to public records and interviews with people behind the scenes. About $2.5 billion of that is direct investment, with the remaining $7.5 billion to be spent on robotaxis purchases over the next few years, the report said.

We’ve reported on Uber’s many investments and partnerships with autonomous vehicle companies across drones, robotaxis, and logistics. Its other investments include WeRide, Lucid and Nuro, Rivian, and Wayve.

This huge number (and especially that $7.5 billion) made me think about another turning point in Uber’s history and how it has visited this heavy coast. Uber may have started out with a plan to be light on goods, but in the short term it has done the exact opposite.

Uber continued to shoot the moon between 2015 and 2018. It launched electric air taxi developer Uber Elevate and autonomous vehicle unit Uber ATG, which will be boosted by its 2016 acquisition of Otto. It also took on a micromobility startup in 2018.

Then in 2020, Uber pulled the trigger, leaving all those moonshots behind. Uber sold Uber ATG to Aurora, Jump to Lime, and Elevate to Joby Aviation. But it was not completely separated; it maintained the poles of equality for all.

Uber is now entering a new and different era of hard assets. It’s not about shelling out millions, or even billions, to develop technology in-house, although I’m sure people would be quick to point out that there’s always R&D going on at Uber. Instead, it seems to focus on owning (or perhaps renting) physical assets.

That could mean some interesting line items on Uber’s balance sheet in the future.

Controlling robotic aircraft developed by the rest companies may not have been the original idea of ​​Uber, or its former CEO Travis Kalanick, who said the company made a mistake when it abandoned its AV development plan. But this new method can still achieve the same end.

A small bird

Earlier this month, I interviewed The Eclipse partner Jiten Behl about the firm’s new $1.3 billion fund and where that money might go. The firm, as I wrote, aims to incubate other startups (eg, it was behind the Rivian spinout Again). Behl wouldn’t give me details, only saying, “We’re definitely working on a few really cool ideas.” He also said that Eclipse is very interested in startups that work in all businesses.

Thanks to one little birdie and a document dive by senior reporter Sean O’Kane, it looks like a seed announcement is imminent for the San Francisco-based autonomous transporter I’m told is driverless. This sounds similar to what Einride has built, but since we haven’t seen it yet, we’ll have to wait.

The company’s roster isn’t huge, but it’s full of Silicon Valley tech elite, including a co-founder who was at Uber ATG, Pronto, and Waabi. Stay tuned for more.

Got a tip? Email Kirsten Korosec at [email protected] or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at [email protected].

Deals!

The slate is back with more money as it prepares to put its first affordable trucks into production by the end of 2026.

The electric car startup, which was started with the backing of Jeff Bezos, has raised another $650 million in a Series C funding round led by TWG Global. Keep your eye on TWG. This is a company owned by Guggenheim Partners CEO (and owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers) Mark Walter and investor Thomas Tull.

Slate has raised nearly $1.4 billion to date, and its previous investors include General Catalyst, Jeff Bezos’ family office, VC firm Slauson & Co., and former Amazon CEO Diego Piacentini, as TechCrunch first reported last year.

Some deals caught my attention…

Glydwaysa San Francisco-based startup that builds autonomous pods designed to operate on 2-meter-wide dedicated lanes in cities, has raised $170 million in a Series C funding round co-led by Suzuki Motor Corporation, ACS Group, and Khosla Ventures. Existing investors Mitsui Chemicals and Gates Frontier and new investor Obayashi Corporation also participated. But wait, there’s more.

GM again Ford are reportedly talking to the Pentagon about whether the auto industry can help the military revamp its procurement system and find cheaper, faster ways to buy cars, weapons, or other construction materials, the New York Times reported, citing anonymous sources.

A loopThe San Francisco-based startup has raised $95 million in a Series C funding round led by Valor Equity Partners and Valor Atreides AI Fund, and includes investments from 8VC, Founders Fund, Index Ventures, and JP Morgan’s late-stage fund, Growth Equity Partners.

The King’s Tractora startup developing electric, autonomous tractors has moved on (ahem) to another pasture. The startup was acquired by Caterpillar after struggling to transition into a software services business.

Uber increase its proportion Delivery Hero by 4.5%, reports the Financial Times. Uber agreed to buy about 270 million euros in shares from Prosus, a Dutch investment group and the largest shareholder of Delivery Hero.

Notable readings and other stories

Doug Fieldchief executive officer Ford‘s electric car and technology strategies in the past five years, he goes. Significantly, Ford is shaking up the organization as well, creating a “product and industry innovation” team to be led by a COO. Kumar Galhotra. Any guesses as to where Field is headed next? Maybe he’ll go back to Silicon Valley.

The Lightshipan all-electric RV, is expanding its Colorado factory by an additional 44,000 square feet, which will allow it to quadruple its production capacity.

Rivian and battery recycling and joint Redwood Materials implementation over the years. We are now seeing the fruits of that relationship. Redwood installs battery energy storage at Rivian’s factory in Illinois. Getting caught? Redwood uses 100 second-life Rivian battery packs, which will provide 10 megawatt-hours (MWh) of dispatchable power to reduce costs and load on the grid during peak demand.

Tesla has created a new self-driving app that makes it easy for owners to sign up for its Full Self-Driving software and see statistics on how — and how often — they use it. This may not be big news, but it caught my eye because of the gamified qualities of these new figures.

Waymoas usual, it has a few news items this week. An Alphabet subsidiary has begun testing its autonomous vehicles on public roads in London. It also removed its waiting list in Miami and Orlando to scale its robot services in the two cities.

One thing…

This newsletter is not my only project that relies heavily on robots. My podcast, the Autonocasttoo, as the worlds of autonomous vehicles, AI, and robots converge. See this discussion no Foxglove the founder Adrian MacNeilwho used to work at Cruise.