AV Startups Pitch Trucks VC at Record Pace as Second Boom Takes Hold

Trucks VC has fielded pitches from 81 new autonomous vehicle startups so far in 2026 — two-thirds more than last year and enough to surpass the boom years of a decade ago. The early-stage specialist argues in a new blog post that the industry is in a second, bigger AV wave, fueled by breakthroughs in AI foundation models.

Trucks VC partner Puneeth Meruva said the comparison to 2016's buzz doesn't capture what's happening now. "For a long time AV companies were trying to go from what was AV 1.0 to AV 2.0, which is kind of this holy grail end-to-end architecture for AVs," Meruva told TechCrunch. "And I think the foundation models now provide a technical architecture that makes those end-to-end systems possible."

Why is the barrier to entry lower now?

Foundation models generalize well across environments and scenarios, which could make AVs cheaper and faster to deploy. Open source models like Nvidia's Alpamayo and Qwen's vision-language-action models have made it even easier for startups to launch.

Meruva said Trucks is consistently seeing startups deploy within a few months and with less than $1 million raised. The firm has invested in some of them, though Meruva wouldn't name names.

The mix surprised TechCrunch's editor. Construction, warehouse, agriculture and mining startups were in the pile, but a growing number are pitching pure-play robotaxi businesses — many positioning themselves as direct competitors to Waymo. Meruva sees room for smaller players: "In this world, smaller, more niche autonomy companies can compete — maybe they're not competing with Waymo on a global scale, but maybe they're competing in specific regions or specific types of routes." He expects even more AV startups to pitch the firm next year.

Where did the big money go this week?

• Re:Build raised $2.1 billion to "expand Re:Build's capacity to manufacture hard tech products and launch new industrial startups." General Catalyst and JPMorganChase's Strategic Investment Group led. Other investors weren't disclosed. The Massachusetts manufacturing accelerator, co-founded by Amazon's former commercial CEO Jeff Wilke, calls itself "America's answer to Shenzhen."
• Bedrock Robotics raised $600 million at a $4.1 billion valuation. CapitalG and Emergence Capital co-led the Series C. New investors USIT, Bessemer Venture Partners and Temasek joined existing backers 8VC, Georgian, Valor Equity Partners, Xora, Eclipse, Perry Creek Capital and Nvidia.
• DoorDash agreed to acquire Instacart for $17 billion. DoorDash also disclosed in Q3 earnings that AI agents have so far placed only a few hundred orders.
• PreScalar, a San Francisco factory-software startup founded last year by three alumni of Cruise, Google, Rivian and Waymo, raised $7 million in seed funding. Dynamo Ventures and BMW i Ventures co-led, with Blue Wire Capital, Uplift Ventures and Antler participating.

What else moved in mobility?

Elroy Air, which builds autonomous heavy-cargo drones for defense and logistics, hired Jeremy Hux as CFO in preparation for going public. Ford announced two EV chargers that let its forthcoming Fathom pickup power homes or the grid. GM, now embracing hybrids, agreed to a $220 million settlement with 36 states over allegations it illegally sold private driving behavior and location data to brokers — after earlier settlements with California and the FTC.

Kodiak AI will deliver 75 self-driving trucks to DTL Transport starting in 2028, its first binding commercial deal for driverless big rigs on public highways.

Rivian raised its 2026 delivery guidance after strong demand for the new R2, lifting the floor from 65,000 to 67,000 EVs against a prior 65,000-to-70,000 range. Its $5.8 billion joint venture with Volkswagen Group is expanding to include AI assistants; whether VW will invest more is unclear. Tesla, meanwhile, is turning to Turo to boost adoption of Full Self-Driving (Supervised).

Waymo and Toyota locked in a manufacturing partnership. Toyota will build AV-ready bZ4X vehicles and integrate Waymo's self-driving system at its Japan factory, for robotaxi service in Japan, the U.K. and other international markets. The companies hinted the deal could eventually lead to licensing Waymo tech for personally owned vehicles.

With 81 pitches counted, capital flowing at billion-dollar scale and Toyota-Waymo hardware moving to factories, the question for 2027 is whether deployment keeps pace with the dealmaking.