Luminar sale approved despite last-minute mystery bid

An unidentified bidder submitted a Hail Mary offer that was “substantially higher” than the winning bid at auction. Founder Austin Russell has been circling a bid, but it’s not clear he was behind it.

San Francisco Police Department investigating Zoox collision with a parked car

The investigation is looking into a January 17 crash where a Zoox robotaxi hit the driver’s side door of a parked car, which Zoox said was “suddenly opened.”

Modelence raises $13 million to smooth out the vibe-coding stack

How do you build tooling for the AI software stack? A company called Modelence has an interesting answer.

Waabi raises $1B and expands into robotaxis with Uber

Waabi has secured a $750 million Series C round to accelerate autonomous trucking, and another roughly $250 million commitment from Uber to deploy 25,000 robotaxis exclusively on its platform.

Risotto raises $10M seed to use AI to make ticketing systems easier to use

Designed to autonomously resolve help desk tickets, Risotto has raised $10 million in seed funding in a round led by Bonfire Ventures.

Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni’s Phia raises $35M to ‘make shopping fun again’

“We’re on the cusp of a completely new way of shopping,” Gates told TechCrunch.

Uber launches an ‘AV Labs’ division to gather driving data for robotaxi partners

Uber is not developing its own robotaxis again; instead it plans to collect and offer data. It’s a bet that more volume will help autonomous vehicle partners solve the weirdest edge cases.

Qualcomm backs SpotDraft to scale on-device contract AI with valuation doubling toward $400M

SpotDraft now processes over 1 million contracts annually using its AI tool, with contract volumes up 173% year-over-year.

Meta to test premium subscriptions on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp

In the coming months, Meta is going to explore a premium experience on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp that gives users access to special features and more control over how they share and connect, while keeping the core experiences free. 

Rad Power Bikes reaches deal to sell itself for $13.2 million

A company called Life Electric Vehicle Holdings has emerged as the top bidder for Rad Power’s assets. It’s not clear what the company plans to do with them, though.