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OK, who positioned their guess on Normal Motors being the touchdown spot for Aurora co-founder and chief product officer Sterling Anderson? Not me. However right here we’re. A couple of days after Anderson introduced his resignation from his place and the board at Aurora, he spoke to me about his subsequent gig as chief product officer at GM. Briefly, he’ll oversee the whole product line of GM’s gas-powered and electrical automobiles — a place that can cowl the whole life cycle of GM’s portfolio and embrace {hardware}, software program, companies, and person expertise.
Anderson couldn’t say an excessive amount of; plus, he hasn’t began the job but. Anderson did say he wouldn’t have taken the brand new job if Aurora had but to launch its industrial self-driving truck service in Texas.
Let’s bounce into the remainder of the information.
A little bit chook
In a completely wild flip of occasions, Luminar’s founder Austin Russell seems to have been pushed out as CEO and board chair. You’ll be able to learn my protection right here, which gives a little bit of an outline of how this unfolded, however I do know there may be a lot extra to this story. TL;DR: In the event you had been to solely learn Luminar’s Q1 earnings report, you’d assume Russell was nonetheless on the helm. A separate press launch, launched as the corporate’s earnings went out, introduced a management change and that Russell had resigned following an ethics inquiry from the board’s audit committee.
Right here’s what I’m listening to from a couple of little birds. The phrase “blindsided” got here up greater than as soon as, and the chaos isn’t over. Luminar board member Jun Hong Heng, who’s founder and chief funding officer at Crescent Cove Advisors and a mentor of Russell’s, resigned a day later. Heng was additionally on the audit committee.
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Offers!
Aurora has had an odd couple of weeks full of highs — driverless industrial service woohoo! — and twists — whoops, there goes a co-founder. To cap issues off, Uber introduced plans to offer $1 billion in exchangeable senior notes due in 2028 in non-public placement. As you would possibly count on, shares dropped after buyers received spooked about potential dilution and what this would possibly imply for the worth of Aurora’s inventory.
Different offers that received my consideration …
AutoUnify, the most recent startup that has launched out of the Up.Labs-Porsche partnership, raised $5 million in seed cash. The Santa Monica, California-based startup, which constructed an API to permit dealerships and repair retailers to speak in actual time with the producers and software program distributors that energy their operations, has been working quietly for about 9 months.
Chinese language battery producer CATL is much from a startup. But it surely’s value noting this bananas IPO plan. The corporate needs to lift not less than HK$31.01 billion — that’s just shy of $4 billion — in its Hong Kong itemizing. That is the most important itemizing globally in 2025.
Right here’s a potential deal that has raised some eyebrows. Federal railroad regulators are in talks with Elon Musk’s tunneling agency, The Boring Firm, over a multibillion-dollar Amtrak mission.
Flock Freight, the shared truckload freight brokerage based mostly in California, raised $60 million in a Sequence E funding spherical led by O’Neil Strategic Capital. Susquehanna Personal Fairness Investments, SignalFire, GLP Capital Companions, and Bracket Capital additionally participated.
Notable reads and different tidbits
Autonomous automobiles
Tesla’s plan to launch a robotaxi service in Austin subsequent month has caught the eye of federal security investigators. The Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Security Administration’s Workplace of Defects Investigation despatched the corporate an in depth listing of questions on its upcoming robotaxi service as a part of an investigation into how the corporate’s “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” software program operates in low-visibility circumstances.
Recollects are beginning to pop up extra within the AV sector. Final week it was Zoox. Now Waymo has issued a software program recall on 1,200 self-driving automobiles after a few of its robotaxis had been concerned in minor collisions with gates, chains, and different gate-like roadway objects.
WeRide appears to be attempting to ramp in Guangzhou. The Chinese language firm stated it has launched eight autonomous robotaxi pilot operation routes within the central a part of town. The corporate has additionally began trialing totally driverless robotaxis in Abu Dhabi.
Electrical automobiles, charging, & batteries
Normal Motors has been engaged on a brand new battery chemistry referred to as lithium manganese-rich, which it says ought to slash prices whereas delivering driving vary. Notably, these LMR batteries dramatically cut back the quantity of nickel and cobalt in contrast with GM’s most superior cells, two vital minerals that aren’t available from home sources in america.
A footnote in Lucid’s latest Q1 regulatory submitting offers a bit extra perception into its gross sales numbers. The EV maker’s file quarter received a raise from rental gross sales and firm leases.
Slate Auto has racked up greater than 100,000 reservations for its customizable low-cost electrical pickup truck.
Everybody, let’s give a sluggish clap to Toyota for redesigning — and extra importantly, renaming — its sole all-electric vehicle for the U.S. market. The EV, as soon as referred to as the bZ4X, will now merely be bZ. The unique bZ4X was not nicely obtained. I’m wanting ahead to getting behind the wheel to see what enhancements Toyota has made. In the meantime, Toyota has brought back the C-HR nameplate, however this time as an EV. Hopefully this time it’s extra profitable. It arrives within the U.S. in 2026.
Gig financial system
Three years in the past, reporter Rebecca Bellan famous that Uber was going via an Amazonification. Her pitch was that the corporate, like Amazon, had created a closed enterprise loop to feed clients again into different Uber channels. The second a part of that evolution has began, she reported this week. Uber seems to be transferring past its concentrate on transportation and dealing to grow to be a handy tremendous app, an aggregator of companies, a daily-use life-style platform with its finest choices tucked behind a paywall.
Way forward for flight
U.S. lawmakers launched the Supersonic Aviation Modernization Act in a bid to revise the FAA’s 52-year ban on supersonic flight over U.S. soil. The timing could possibly be essential for startup Growth Supersonic, which has made progress in growing next-generation supersonic plane
Vertical Aerospace introduced a plan to develop a hybrid-electric variant of its VX4, suggesting the corporate is pursuing alternatives in protection and logistics.
In-car tech
Apple’s subsequent era of its widespread CarPlay infotainment software program is lastly launching. Reminder: It was first introduced three years in the past. The brand new model, referred to as CarPlay Extremely, will make its debut on new Aston Martin automobiles within the U.S. and Canada.
Google is bringing Gemini, its generative AI, to all automobiles that help Android Auto within the subsequent few months. Patrick Brady, VP of Android for Vehicles, stated Gemini will floor within the Android Auto expertise in two fundamental methods.