Moove Raises $250M to Scale Autonomous Fleet Operations
Uber and Wayve get approval for supervised robotaxi service in London, Waymo opens up Dallas robotaxi service to everyone, and Zoox to launch paid robotaxi service in Las Vegas on Monday
This week’s edition is brought to you by Virewirx. Enable full autonomy with Virewirx’s VX60, a high-performance 60 GHz wireless system for fast and scalable robotaxi data movement.
Top Story of the Week
Moove raises $250M to become the backbone of the robotaxi industry (link).
Moove is the fleet operator for Waymo in Phoenix, Miami, and Las Vegas, and in the future, London… This latest funding will be used to scale the company’s autonomous vehicle fleet management business, including hiring about 350 people.
Related: My podcast interview with Ming Maa - Moove AV CEO (link).
Other Stuff
Waymo autonomous rides now open to public in Dallas as waitlist ends (link).
Anyone can download the Waymo app and request a driverless ride within the company's Dallas service area as Waymo says nearly 150,000 people rode in its autonomous vehicles during the invitation-only phase.
Uber is building an autonomous vehicle empire, and here’s every company it’s using to do it (link). Comprehensive list, if anyone wants to help me rank all of Uber’s AV partners, please reach out.
Atoms and Joby Aviation Partner to Build Nationwide Vertiport Network (link, no paywall). Interesting to see Travis Kalanick move into transportation infrastructure through Atoms, with plans for vertiports that connect air taxis, AVs and rideshare.
Uber and Wayve get TfL approval for supervised robotaxi service in London (link).
TfL confirmed that the vehicles have been licensed as PHVs, not as automated vehicles. The approval allows supervised passenger trips with a licensed PHV driver present, but does not permit fully driverless passenger services.
Amazon’s Zoox to launch paid robotaxi service in Las Vegas on Monday Aug. 10 (link).
Faster Data Off the Vehicle—Faster AI on the Road
Virewirx’s VX60 High Performance Wireless System has piqued our interest—that’s why we’re partnering with them this week to share their unique millimeter wave system built to move massive AV fleet data quickly and reliably. Reach out to Brian Lee at info@virewirx.com to learn more.
Uber CEO brushes off reports of a Waymo break-up (link, no paywall). Sometimes I forget how good Dara is with his words. Calling the “on-the-ground partnership” with Waymo “very strong” gives him some plausible deniability, but it still feels rosy given the recent reports of tensions between the two companies. Uber also seems increasingly eager to point out that robotaxis still account for less than 0.5% of rides on its platform. But that only tells you how many AV rides happen on Uber. It says nothing about all the Waymo rides happening outside Uber, which is kind of the whole point.
“Waymo is a very important partner of ours, and we continue to operate in Austin and Atlanta,” Khosrowshahi said in an earnings call today. “We believe we’ll continue to operate next year in those marketplaces. It’s a terrific product, and the on-the-ground partnership continues to be very strong.”
‘AVs were back at the center of Uber’s Q2 earnings call. 75% of analyst questions included autonomous vehicles as a central topic, the highest share since I started tracking these calls four years ago..’ (link).
“Importantly, in more mature AV markets including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix, Uber’s category share, both citywide and in AV operating zones, is higher today than it was a year ago.” I initially misread this tweet and was skeptical of the claim, but after Balaji dropped the hammer and shared the latest Yipit market share data (come on, you guys know I can’t afford Yipit data), it makes a lot more sense. Waymo quickly took share from Uber and Lyft in San Francisco, but over the past year its share has actually fallen while both Uber and Lyft have gained ground.
The chart isn’t quite as bad as it looks for Waymo though (link), since Yipit only counts rides that start and end inside Waymo’s operating zone. Waymo expanded its ODD in June and November 2025, which means the denominator suddenly included a bunch more Uber and Lyft rides in areas Waymo had only just entered. Too late though, damage done to my ego. Balaji wins this round, maybe next quarter he’ll come on the podcast.
Related: Lyft Q2 2026 Earnings Prepared Remarks (link).
We believe the future is hybrid and as AVs scale the market will expand. Take San Francisco, where Lyft Rides within the Operational Design Domain (ODD) grew approximately 20% year over year, the strongest growth across all current markets with AVs.
Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short (link). FSD Supervised is an amazing product, but I’m Team Waymo on this debate. Now that LiDAR and radar costs have come down sharply, it’s hard for me to see the argument against using more sensors and more types of data when you’re trying to build the safest possible driver.
His answer draws the line that camera-only advocates tend to skip right past. “Humans of course can drive with just eyes, so there’s that proof of existence,” he said. “If the goal were to just approximately match human performance or to build an assist product, that’s a very reasonable way to go.” Then the catch. If you’re targeting full autonomy and strongly superhuman performance, he said, “you find that weak sensing just leads to a safety curve that flattens out way too early.”
Related: Waymo Co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov: The Demo Is Only 1% Of The Work (link).
A London Taxi Family Confronts the Driverless Future (link, no paywall).
‘Few words on $UBER: It actually started to look like a no-brainer’ (link) via Oguz Erkan.
Zipline CEO Keller Cliffton: Zipline update, from our command center (link). Looking forward to our interview!
Just crossed 2.5 million deliveries.
Completed 140 million+ commercial autonomous miles.
Certain individual aircraft have flown 1 million+ autonomous miles.
Businesses delivering with Zipline increased 13x in H1 2026.
Within Uber-Waymo split, a key labor battle over AVs is being waged in the nation’s capital (link).
Zoox’s regulatory win is a win for Tesla, too (link).
In other words, exemption decisions must be focused narrowly on vehicle performance, not the overall safety of the self-driving technology… That regulatory limitation will make it easier for Tesla to self-certify the safety of its camera-only driving system, which has been heavily scrutinized.
Uber’s Robotaxi Ambition to Face Scrutiny as Shares Languish (link, no paywall). Nice chart ;)
Inside the Luxury Robotaxi Uber, Lucid and Nuro Are Testing (link).
Engineering Tour: Motional IONIQ 5 Robotaxi (link).
Portland moves to regulate robotaxis (link). Requiring a human driver in an AV defeats the point, but I think concerns about displaced rideshare drivers are legitimate. Personally, I like the idea of a small fee on AV trips to support affected drivers. Cities should also have more say and access to AV data, especially when these vehicles are operating on their streets.
‘Americans Can’t Buy Chinese EVs. Waymo Is Importing Thousands’ (link). Great breakdown from Alan Ohnsman at Forbes (got me to pay for a subscription!). The Ojai deal was done well before the huge tariffs on Chinese EVs, so Waymo is now kind of stuck with them. They’ve already imported 3,200+, which is a big number, but with the tariffs and the vehicles coming over stripped down, it’s hard to see Ojai as a great long-term vehicle solution for Waymo.
Related: ‘Just spotted upwards of 500 yes 500 Waymo Ojai today in Mesa, AZ’ (link).
Deep Dive: What Happens When Cars Drive Themselves (link).
Atlas, Kodiak grow autonomous truck fleet in Permian Basin (link).
Atlas now runs driverless trucks concurrently from depots in Texas and New Mexico, roughly 90 minutes apart, widening its delivery reach across one of the world’s most active oil and gas basins. Since deployments began in 2024, the fleet has completed around 7,000 loads across 15 routes, hauling more than 450,000 tons of sand and logging over 23,500 driverless hours in the first quarter of 2026 alone.
RoboDock CEO Zinny Weli: Big milestone: we moved into our own lab space. Building, testing, and iterating all under one roof has been a game changer for how quickly we can move (link). Is that a Jaguar I-Pace I see? 👀
Waymo expands D.C. footprint amid lobbying for council bill (link).
NVIDIA Alpamayo 2 Super, the Frontier Open Model for Robotaxis and Autonomous Vehicles, Now Available for Commercial Use (link).
Related: How NVIDIA Alpamayo Is Accelerating Autonomous Driving with Matt Cragun (link).
‘Zoox updated its Terms of Service today’ (link).
‘Autolane just launched in Austin. It’s 13 Tesla Model Ys making autonomous restaurant deliveries, and it’s live now with Tso Chinese Takeout & Delivery’ (link).
What else we're reading/listening to
Why Waymos Keep Driving Into Floods (link). Our latest guest piece where founder of DeterministicAI.tech Sanjay Kumar explores why flooded roads expose one of autonomous driving’s biggest blind spots, breaking down the sensor limitations behind recent Waymo incidents and the technologies that could eventually solve them. It’s already getting some love on Reddit.
Building the Energy Infrastructure for Autonomous Vehicles with Alex Pischalnikov (link). My latest podcast where I sit down with MN8 Energy’s Senior Director of Strategy to discuss why charging and energy infrastructure are becoming critical enablers of autonomous vehicles, how depot design and charging strategy impact robotaxi and autonomous trucking economics, and what the AV industry can learn from years of EV charging deployment, among other things.
Qasar Younis, Applied Intuition & Mamoon Hamid, Kleiner Perkins | RAISE Summit 2026 (link).
AVs/Humans behaving badly
‘Ojai continues to scrape on this hill - sf’ (link). Turn sound on.
‘Cracked Ojai Screen - LA’ (link).
‘Man smoking on top of Waymo with rider inside’ (link).
‘Another Robotaxi Supervisor Intervention: Hate to put these videos out but after being dropped off at SFO airport on my ride that had an intervention at the end, the driver leaving took over as well to leave departures drop off’ (link).
Shout-outs
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Neat Jobs
Multiple Strategic Partnerships roles at Waymo, via Jimmy Lyons.
Program Manager, Contingent Workforce at Zoox (link) via Steven Kekich.
HR Generalist at Atoms (link) via Chord Fonvielle.
Job Moves
Kimberly Wasiljew: Google -> Waymo (link).
Philip Reinckens: InTouch -> Atoms (link).
Ryan Wallace: FlexAI -> Waabi (link).
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Until next week :)
-Harry