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The autonomous vehicle industry is years — maybe decades — from maturing. And so there’s still a Wild West quality to the sector, in spite of the steady stream of announcements that do show marked progress. Two such news items from this week illustrate my point of progress, possibility, and even a bit of peril (at least to the ups and downs a public market can provide).
First up is Gatik, an AV and logistics startup that is applying its tech to middle-mile trucks. The startup, which I first wrote about in 2019, announced a multi-year and expanded commercial partnership with Canada’s largest retailer, Loblaw. Under the deal, Gatik will deploy 20 autonomous trucks by the end of 2025 to provide driverless delivery to Loblaw’s network of stores in the greater Toronto area. Co-founder and CEO Gautam Narang told me the company will add another 30 autonomous trucks to the fleet by the end of 2026.
The deal is notable, and not just because of the fleet size. As Narang explained to me, the trucks will be handling the full regional network for Loblaw. This means these third-generation AV trucks will operate autonomously to pick up products from two distribution centers and make deliveries to over 300 retail stores. “These are multiple brands within the Loblaw umbrella,” he said.
In other words, this is not some fixed-route pilot program. It’s commercial, and it’s complex.
Next up is Kodiak Robotics, another startup I have reported on since its founding. The company, which is developing self-driving trucks for highway, industrial, and defense uses, began trading on Nasdaq this week under the tickers KDK and KDKRW.
The company, which is now called Kodiak AI, went public via a merger with special-purpose acquisition company Ares Acquisition Corporation II, an affiliate of Ares Management. The deal valued the startup at about $2.5 billion.
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Kodiak raised $275 million in financing. More than $212.5 million came from certain institutional investors, including $145 million in PIPE funding and about $62.9 million in trust cash from Ares. It should be noted that the trust cash is smaller (it was $562 million), as some SPAC investors redeemed their shares.
I spoke to founder and CEO Don Burnette the day before Kodiak’s big debut about why he took the company public — let alone via a SPAC. It was a big moment for Burnette, whose family was on hand to watch him ring the bell and mark the milestone. The stock was trading at about $7.70 Friday, down about 10% from its market open.
“As you can imagine, building and scaling a transformative autonomous driving company is very capital intensive, and we were looking to access the public markets as a path forward for the company. And when choosing between, you know, traditional IPO or a SPAC, we considered all the options,” he said. “We felt like, from a timing perspective, it was the right decision for the company (to take the SPAC route).”
It should be noted that Burnette is also quite bullish on defense. Here’s why:
“I think autonomy is the future of ground transportation broadly,” he said, before noting the benefits within defense for logistics and reconnaissance operations for ground vehicles. “One of the key things is defense requires unstructured autonomy, and this is one of the areas where we become specialists.”
A little bird
A few weeks ago, we wrote about some trouble at Hyundai‘s electric air taxi startup Supernal, including that the company had stopped work on its air taxi program and that its CEO and CTO were out.
This week, a little bird told us that a wider reorg of Supernal’s C-suite was afoot — something Hyundai Motor Group has now confirmed to us.
Chief strategy officer Jaeyong Song and chief safety officer Tracy Lamb are part of a “transition to new leadership,” according to the Korean conglomerate. Song’s departure is particularly notable, as he was once the VP of Hyundai’s Advanced Air Mobility division, which Supernal was spun out of in 2021. Also gone is Lina Yang, who most recently served as chief of staff to the startup’s now-former CEO, but who also served as Supernal’s “Head of Intelligent Systems” before that.
Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.
Deals!
Remember Moxion Power, the portable battery startup that raised $110 million before going bankrupt? The founders are back with a new startup called Anode Technology Company, which has designed a mobile battery and inverter that can be used for EV charging and supplying remote power to construction sites and live events. The startup just raised $9 million in seed funding in a round led by Eclipse Ventures; its partner, Jiten Behl, who spearheaded the deal, was previously Rivian’s chief growth officer. Apparently, Behl’s interest was sparked by his experience at Rivian.
Side note: Palo Alto-based venture capital firm Eclipse sure has been busy this year. The VC firm led the $105 million round of Also, the micromobility startup that spun out of Rivian, and recently hired longtime T. Rowe Price Group investor Joe Fath as partner and head of growth.
The firm doesn’t explicitly focus on transportation, but some of its portfolio companies in this sector include Arc, Bedrock Robotics, Reliable Robotics, Skyryse, and Wayve.
Other deals that got my attention …
Rapido, a popular ride-hailing platform in India that competes with Uber, doubled its valuation to $2.3 billion following a secondary share sale by food delivery giant Swiggy. The share sale comes just weeks after Rapido began piloting food deliveries, edging into Swiggy’s core territory.
Telo, the tiny electric truck developer, raised $20 million in a Series A funding round co-led by designer and Telo co-founder Yves Béhar and Tesla co-founder Marc Tarpenning, who is on Telo’s board. Additional investment came from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and early-stage funds like TO VC, E12 Ventures, and Neo.
TheTrump administration is seeking up to a 10% stake in Lithium Americas in exchange for renegotiating the repayment period of a $2.26 billion Department of Energy loan. GM is a major investor in the Canadian company, which is developing a lithium mine in Nevada that is expected to be the largest in the Western Hemisphere.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Hackers have had quite an active week in the transportation sector. Stellantis confirmed a data breach involving customers’ personal information. The breach is linked to a hack of its Salesforce database. Meanwhile, a hack that began last Friday and targeted check-in systems provided by Collins Aerospace caused delays at Brussels, Berlin, and Dublin airports, as well as London’s Heathrow. The U.K.’s National Crime Agency has arrested a man in connection to the ransomware attack. And finally, Jaguar Land Rover said it will not resume production at its factories for yet another week as it continues to grapple with fallout from a cyberattack.
Battery materials startup Sila started operations at its facility in Moses Lake, Washington, a milestone that could pave the way for longer-range, faster-charging EVs. The factory is the first large-scale silicon anode factory in the West and will initially be capable of making enough battery materials for 20,000 to 50,000 EVs. Future expansion could fulfill demand for as many as 2.5 million vehicles.
Automakers continue to pull back on EVs and electrified vehicles. Honda is ending U.S. production of its Acura ZDX electric vehicle that was being built by General Motors in Tennessee, CNBC reported. And Stellantis has canceled plans to produce a 4xe plug-in hybrid Jeep Gladiator in North America by the end of 2025. Which EV is next on the chopping block?
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into Rivian over issues with the seat belts in its electric delivery vans that could introduce additional risk in the event of a crash, Bloomberg reported.
Tesla asked the Environmental Protection Agency not to roll back current vehicle emissions standards, breaking from other major automakers that want to see the rules eased.
TuneIn, an audio streaming service, is collaborating with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deliver emergency alerts directly to drivers.
Volvo Cars is pledging a commitment to U.S. production. The company said it will continue to invest in its U.S. car plant near Charleston, South Carolina, and announced plans to expand the factory to produce a hybrid vehicle by the end of the decade.
Waymo launched “Waymo for Business,” a new service designed for companies to set up accounts so their employees can access robotaxis in cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco.
Zoox has asked federal regulators for an exemption that would allow the Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company to commercially deploy its custom-built robotaxis, which lack traditional controls like pedals and a steering wheel.
One more thing
Finally, proof of life from Luminar founder Austin Russell.
You may remember that Russell was mysteriously and suddenly replaced in May as CEO of the lidar company he created. The company has never truly explained his departure, only that it was the result of a “code of business conduct and ethics inquiry” initiated by the board.
Russell has been silent; while he remains on Luminar’s board, he hasn’t signed any of the filings the company has submitted with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since he was replaced. This week, he reappeared as the co-founder of a new company called Russell AI Labs. It’s billed as a “platform that backs and builds transformative AI and frontier technology companies.”
It doesn’t seem like his troubles at Luminar have affected his ability to attract high-profile support or make eyebrow-raising deals. Russell’s co-founders are Markus Schäfer, CTO and board member at Mercedes-Benz Group AG, and Murtaza Ahmed, who served as a managing director at Goldman Sachs before joining SoftBank and was a partner in the $100 billion Vision Fund and managing partner of its $5 billion Latin America Fund.
As part of Russell AI Lab’s debut, the startup announced it has taken a $300 million stake in agentic AI company Emergence AI.
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#TechCrunch #Mobility #Selfdriving #trucks #startup #Kodiak #public #shakeup #Hyundais #Supernal #TechCrunch
![ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet: No one is coming for us | TechCrunch
Every time you use AI, you are, in some small way, depending on a 42-year-old, 44,000-person Dutch company that spends €4.5 billion each year to advance its technology.
ASML, headquartered in the Netherlands, makes the machines that make the chips that make AI possible. More specifically, it makes the only machines in the world capable of printing the microscopic patterns on silicon wafers that define the most advanced semiconductors — a process called extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV. The machines are roughly the size of a school bus, take months to assemble, involve hundreds of suppliers, and cost anywhere from 0 million to upwards of 0 million apiece depending on the generation (prices that give even ASML’s biggest customers pause occasionally).
That monopoly has made ASML the most valuable company in Europe, worth over 0 billion. And with the four largest American tech companies — Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Google — committing more than 0 billion in AI infrastructure spending this year alone, demand for ASML’s machines has surged to the point where the company has openly said the world won’t have enough chips for years.
All that demand has also made ASML a target. Substrate, a San Francisco startup founded by a protégé of Peter Thiel, has raised more than 0 million and been valued at over billion on the claim that it can build a rival lithography machine. Separately, there have been reports that former ASML engineers in China have partly reverse-engineered the technology, a prospect with enormous geopolitical implications.
Christophe Fouquet, who became ASML’s CEO in 2024 after more than a decade at the company, sat down with this editor on the rooftop deck of his Beverly Hills hotel Tuesday morning ahead of his appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference. Dressed in a blue suit and white shirt, he was relaxed — even when the conversation turned to the rivals.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
TC: Did you see the AI explosion coming?
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San Francisco, CA
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October 13-15, 2026
CF: No, not at all. We worked very hard, but not with the idea that this would come. You went from a concept — something people thought would eventually arrive — to ChatGPT, which was really the first good example of what AI could do. And now I think we look at AI as the next revolution, not only industrial but societal. Did I see it coming? No. Sitting in the middle of it every day, sometimes we wake up in the morning and still check that what is happening is really happening.
The big question everyone has is whether the supply chain can keep pace with demand. Can it?
The demand is such that the market overall will be supply-limited for quite a bit. Right now, the biggest bottleneck seems to be in chip manufacturing. We, as an equipment supplier, follow our customers, and so far we’ve followed them pretty well — but we know we have to step up our entire supply chain and capacity. If you talk to the hyperscalers, I think they will tell you that for the next two, three, even five years, they’re not going to get enough chips.
TSMC made news recently saying your latest machines are too expensive. How do you respond?
An EUV system, if you look at the price, is going to be more expensive than a low-NA system, but the cost of making a wafer with this tool on some advanced layers will be cheaper. We can get 20%, 30% cost reduction.
[Editors note: both machines Fouquet is referring to here are EUV machines — the same fundamental technology. NA stands for numerical aperture, a measure of how finely a machine can focus light onto a chip. Low-NA EUV is the current generation; high-NA EUV is ASML’s newest generation, capable of printing even finer patterns but carrying a price tag of 0 million or more apiece. Fouquet is arguing that even though the new machine costs more, it produces chips more cheaply.]
I get a lot of questions about whether it’s going to be this month or next month or the month after. And I usually say it doesn’t really matter, because we designed high-NA for the next 10, 20 years. You can go back to the press from 2016, 2017, and you’ll find the same quotes — low-NA EUV was very pricey. We know what happened after that. The same will happen with high-NA.
There’s a startup called Substrate, backed by Peter Thiel, claiming it can build a rival lithography machine. What do you think of it?
Wanting to have it and having it — that’s still a huge difference. The challenges of lithography are many. Being able to make an image is a starting point, but you need to make that image in very high quantity, at very low cost, at high speed, and with nanometer accuracy. I always say the only reason ASML could build an EUV machine is because 80% of it already existed, based on previous knowledge and products built over time. We had to solve one problem — getting EUV light — and that alone took 20 years. When you start from scratch, the challenge is enormous. I’ve seen a lot of claims. I’ve seen a few pictures. But we had our first EUV picture 30 years ago, and we still needed 20 more years of hard work to turn it into a manufacturing system.
What about xLight, a laser startup partly backed by the U.S. government that wants to work with you?
xLight is focusing on one element of our EUV machine — the source that creates the light. The source we have can be extended for many years to come, and we know how to scale it. What xLight is doing is a new source that still has to be built and proven. The only question is whether it provides a performance or cost advantage over what we have. I think the jury is still out. We are working with them so they can demonstrate their technology — we feel that’s a responsibility on our side. But it’s still a very long journey.
There are also reports that former ASML engineers in China have reverse-engineered your machines.
To reverse-engineer anything, you first need to have the machine. And there is no EUV machine in China — we never shipped any tools there. All the tools we have shipped, we know where they are. They’re either in use with customers, and we track those, or they’ve been dismantled and came back to us. The idea that one of our systems is in China is simply wrong. And because our EUV technology has never been exported there, we also have no people in China trained on EUV.
Very early on, when restrictions came in, we created a complete separation within the company between those who can access EUV technology, documents and training, and those who cannot. Our team in China sits on the other side of that line. The facts point to very little, if any, progress at all. It’s hard for people to accept that because access to this technology is so important.
On export controls more broadly — Jensen Huang was here last night arguing that companies should sell globally, that more corporate revenue means more tax dollars for a company’s home country. He also said the important thing is to keep the best and latest closer to home. Do you agree?
I think he’s totally right. What he adds — and I think this is what Nvidia has done — is that you can keep a technological advantage by maintaining a generation gap in what you sell. Nvidia sells a few generations back, and that lets them find the balance between still doing business and not handing a strong competitive advantage to countries where you won’t sell the latest. We believe the same approach should apply to our products. Today we ship tools to China — allowed by export controls — but it’s a tool we first shipped in 2015. If you apply Jensen’s philosophy to our situation, Nvidia is working with roughly an eight-generation gap. We’re looking at two or three. There’s room for rationalization — finding the right balance between not doing business at all, losing a major opportunity, and strongly inviting others to compete with you.
How do you assess where things stand with the current administration on all of this?
There is a good dialogue, which is very important. I think there’s a genuine understanding of what business needs, but there’s still the challenge of finding the right balance between all the different voices and interests. The dialogue is there, and we appreciate that. I’ve been in Washington many times. At least the discussion is happening. But it’s a very complex topic.
You don’t seem concerned about anyone short-cutting your technology.
People like to have the greatest technology, but they tend to forget what it took to build it. It’s been many years of work — not only at ASML but with our suppliers. Many different groups of people solving very difficult problems, and then one company bringing it all together using decades of lithography expertise to turn it into a manufacturing system. This is in no way easy. And I think that’s also our best protection. It’s simply what it took to put it together.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#ASML #CEO #Christophe #Fouquet #coming #TechCrunchASML,Christophe Fouquet,Jensen Huang,nvidia,TSMC](https://i2.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/GettyImages-2250757778.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1 "ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet: No one is coming for us | TechCrunch
Every time you use AI, you are, in some small way, depending on a 42-year-old, 44,000-person Dutch company that spends €4.5 billion each year to advance its technology.
ASML, headquartered in the Netherlands, makes the machines that make the chips that make AI possible. More specifically, it makes the only machines in the world capable of printing the microscopic patterns on silicon wafers that define the most advanced semiconductors — a process called extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV. The machines are roughly the size of a school bus, take months to assemble, involve hundreds of suppliers, and cost anywhere from 0 million to upwards of 0 million apiece depending on the generation (prices that give even ASML’s biggest customers pause occasionally).
That monopoly has made ASML the most valuable company in Europe, worth over 0 billion. And with the four largest American tech companies — Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Google — committing more than 0 billion in AI infrastructure spending this year alone, demand for ASML’s machines has surged to the point where the company has openly said the world won’t have enough chips for years.
All that demand has also made ASML a target. Substrate, a San Francisco startup founded by a protégé of Peter Thiel, has raised more than 0 million and been valued at over billion on the claim that it can build a rival lithography machine. Separately, there have been reports that former ASML engineers in China have partly reverse-engineered the technology, a prospect with enormous geopolitical implications.
Christophe Fouquet, who became ASML’s CEO in 2024 after more than a decade at the company, sat down with this editor on the rooftop deck of his Beverly Hills hotel Tuesday morning ahead of his appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference. Dressed in a blue suit and white shirt, he was relaxed — even when the conversation turned to the rivals.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
TC: Did you see the AI explosion coming?
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
CF: No, not at all. We worked very hard, but not with the idea that this would come. You went from a concept — something people thought would eventually arrive — to ChatGPT, which was really the first good example of what AI could do. And now I think we look at AI as the next revolution, not only industrial but societal. Did I see it coming? No. Sitting in the middle of it every day, sometimes we wake up in the morning and still check that what is happening is really happening.
The big question everyone has is whether the supply chain can keep pace with demand. Can it?
The demand is such that the market overall will be supply-limited for quite a bit. Right now, the biggest bottleneck seems to be in chip manufacturing. We, as an equipment supplier, follow our customers, and so far we’ve followed them pretty well — but we know we have to step up our entire supply chain and capacity. If you talk to the hyperscalers, I think they will tell you that for the next two, three, even five years, they’re not going to get enough chips.
TSMC made news recently saying your latest machines are too expensive. How do you respond?
An EUV system, if you look at the price, is going to be more expensive than a low-NA system, but the cost of making a wafer with this tool on some advanced layers will be cheaper. We can get 20%, 30% cost reduction.
[Editors note: both machines Fouquet is referring to here are EUV machines — the same fundamental technology. NA stands for numerical aperture, a measure of how finely a machine can focus light onto a chip. Low-NA EUV is the current generation; high-NA EUV is ASML’s newest generation, capable of printing even finer patterns but carrying a price tag of 0 million or more apiece. Fouquet is arguing that even though the new machine costs more, it produces chips more cheaply.]
I get a lot of questions about whether it’s going to be this month or next month or the month after. And I usually say it doesn’t really matter, because we designed high-NA for the next 10, 20 years. You can go back to the press from 2016, 2017, and you’ll find the same quotes — low-NA EUV was very pricey. We know what happened after that. The same will happen with high-NA.
There’s a startup called Substrate, backed by Peter Thiel, claiming it can build a rival lithography machine. What do you think of it?
Wanting to have it and having it — that’s still a huge difference. The challenges of lithography are many. Being able to make an image is a starting point, but you need to make that image in very high quantity, at very low cost, at high speed, and with nanometer accuracy. I always say the only reason ASML could build an EUV machine is because 80% of it already existed, based on previous knowledge and products built over time. We had to solve one problem — getting EUV light — and that alone took 20 years. When you start from scratch, the challenge is enormous. I’ve seen a lot of claims. I’ve seen a few pictures. But we had our first EUV picture 30 years ago, and we still needed 20 more years of hard work to turn it into a manufacturing system.
What about xLight, a laser startup partly backed by the U.S. government that wants to work with you?
xLight is focusing on one element of our EUV machine — the source that creates the light. The source we have can be extended for many years to come, and we know how to scale it. What xLight is doing is a new source that still has to be built and proven. The only question is whether it provides a performance or cost advantage over what we have. I think the jury is still out. We are working with them so they can demonstrate their technology — we feel that’s a responsibility on our side. But it’s still a very long journey.
There are also reports that former ASML engineers in China have reverse-engineered your machines.
To reverse-engineer anything, you first need to have the machine. And there is no EUV machine in China — we never shipped any tools there. All the tools we have shipped, we know where they are. They’re either in use with customers, and we track those, or they’ve been dismantled and came back to us. The idea that one of our systems is in China is simply wrong. And because our EUV technology has never been exported there, we also have no people in China trained on EUV.
Very early on, when restrictions came in, we created a complete separation within the company between those who can access EUV technology, documents and training, and those who cannot. Our team in China sits on the other side of that line. The facts point to very little, if any, progress at all. It’s hard for people to accept that because access to this technology is so important.
On export controls more broadly — Jensen Huang was here last night arguing that companies should sell globally, that more corporate revenue means more tax dollars for a company’s home country. He also said the important thing is to keep the best and latest closer to home. Do you agree?
I think he’s totally right. What he adds — and I think this is what Nvidia has done — is that you can keep a technological advantage by maintaining a generation gap in what you sell. Nvidia sells a few generations back, and that lets them find the balance between still doing business and not handing a strong competitive advantage to countries where you won’t sell the latest. We believe the same approach should apply to our products. Today we ship tools to China — allowed by export controls — but it’s a tool we first shipped in 2015. If you apply Jensen’s philosophy to our situation, Nvidia is working with roughly an eight-generation gap. We’re looking at two or three. There’s room for rationalization — finding the right balance between not doing business at all, losing a major opportunity, and strongly inviting others to compete with you.
How do you assess where things stand with the current administration on all of this?
There is a good dialogue, which is very important. I think there’s a genuine understanding of what business needs, but there’s still the challenge of finding the right balance between all the different voices and interests. The dialogue is there, and we appreciate that. I’ve been in Washington many times. At least the discussion is happening. But it’s a very complex topic.
You don’t seem concerned about anyone short-cutting your technology.
People like to have the greatest technology, but they tend to forget what it took to build it. It’s been many years of work — not only at ASML but with our suppliers. Many different groups of people solving very difficult problems, and then one company bringing it all together using decades of lithography expertise to turn it into a manufacturing system. This is in no way easy. And I think that’s also our best protection. It’s simply what it took to put it together.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#ASML #CEO #Christophe #Fouquet #coming #TechCrunchASML,Christophe Fouquet,Jensen Huang,nvidia,TSMC")
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