Uber puts another chip on the self-driving roulette table

Equity

TechCrunch

Business, News, Technology, Business News, Entrepreneurship

4.2 • 372 Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Self-driving truck startup Waabi's billion-dollar fundraise isn't just about trucks. The deal, for $750 million up front plus another $250 million from Uber tied to deployment milestones, marks a major expansion into robotaxis for the company founded by former Uber AI chief Raquel Urtasun. It also feels like another chip from Uber on the autonomous vehicle roulette table. With more than 20 AV partners worldwide, the question isn't just whether Waabi can deliver on its plans to deploy over 25,000 robotaxis, but whether Uber's bet-on-everything strategy actually works. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Sean O'Kane and Anthony Ha discussed Uber's AV partnership strategy, why Waabi's "simulation-first" approach might be different, and more of the week's headlines. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Anduril's drone race recruitment stunt and whether it's the future of hiring or just good PR Phia’s $35M raise for an AI shopping assistant as brick-and-mortar stores close their doors Northwood Space's $100M Series B and the booming space infrastructure market Who’s really winning in TikTok's messy US ownership deal, and the competitors trying to capitalize The IPO window cracking open, and how SpaceX plans to go through it Chapters: 00:00 Intro 02:13 Palmer Luckey's bold recruiting strategy 04:04 Phia raises $35M for sustainable shopping 06:27 Browser extensions & the privacy problem 09:59 Northwood Space's $100M Series B & Space Force contract 12:17 The rise of dual-use space companies 14:01 Waabi's $1B valuation & beyond trucking 16:36 Uber's strategy: Betting on every AV partner 19:12 TikTok's US deal & immediate outage 21:46 TikTok competitors gain ground 24:03 IPO window opening: Ethos, Serve, and SpaceX 27:57 Will Elon actually take SpaceX public this time? 29:11 Outro Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ready to ship AI that works, start building at MongoDB.com slash build.
0:05.6	Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's podcast about the business of startups.
0:11.5	Today is Friday, January 30th.
0:13.5	I'm Kirsten Koresk, transportation editor here at TechCrunch, and I'm joined by Anthony Ha, our weekend editor editor and senior reporter Sean O'Kane.
0:22.3	Let's talk about drones before we get into all the deals and deeper discussions.
0:27.0	Drones and why they are the perfect recruitment tool.
0:31.1	Well, so if you're looking for a job at Anderil, which is the defense tech startup founded
0:36.1	by Palmer Lucky, who I think most people
0:37.9	know from Oculus. They announced that they're going to be having a drone race. And I don't think
0:44.0	they've gotten super specific about like first place is this prize, et cetera, but they've sort of
0:49.4	suggested that some of the prizes are going to include the opportunity to get a job at
0:54.0	Anderil.
0:54.7	It sounds pretty fun, I guess, somewhat high stakes. And to be clear, this, you know, this isn't
1:01.3	something where you're piloting the drone. You actually have to write autonomous software to allow
1:06.0	your drone to compete. So it is, you know, it's a, I guess, a, you know, autonomous drone race, not as drone piloting race. Right. But I have to compete. So it is, you know, it's, I guess, a, you know, autonomous drone race, not as drone
1:12.2	piloting race. Right. But I have to ask, you've known, actually, Palmer Lucky for a long time.
1:18.2	You interviewed him, like, back in, what, 2014. So based on your interactions with him in the
1:24.4	past, is this track? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think one of the,
1:30.2	and I don't want to claim to know him particularly well. I've interviewed him a couple
1:33.0	times. We've exchanged a few messages, you know, at this point, I wouldn't claim to know
1:37.2	more about him than anyone else who's just been following the news. But I think obviously
1:41.8	there's been this trajectory where at the beginning he was just like a normal tech crunch founder, kind of nerdy, big dreams.
	...

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