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A Second, Bigger AV Wave
I've joked on the Equity and Autonocast podcasts that the autonomous vehicle industry feels a lot like 2016 — at least in terms of the buzz surrounding the sector.
But a recent conversation with Trucks VC partner Puneeth Meruva has me rethinking that comparison. By some measures, there's evidence that 2026 is even hotter than the frothy dealmaking days of 2016 and 2017.
Trucks VC, which specializes in early-stage investing, has fielded pitches from 81 new autonomous vehicle startups so far in 2026 — two-thirds more than last year, and enough to surpass the boom years of a decade ago. In a new blog post, the firm argues that we're in the midst of a second, even bigger AV wave fueled by technological breakthroughs. Yes, I'm talking about AI.
Foundation Models Unlock the End-to-End Architecture
"For a long time, AV companies were trying to go from what was AV 1.0 to AV 2.0, which is kind of this holy grail end-to-end architecture for AVs," Meruva told me. "And I think the foundation models now provide a technical architecture that makes those end-to-end systems possible."
These foundation models are particularly good at generalizing across different environments and scenarios, potentially making AVs cheaper and faster to deploy. The arrival of powerful open-source models — such as Nvidia's Alpamayo and Qwen's general-purpose vision-language-action models — has made it even easier for startups to get off the ground.
The barrier to entry is lower than ever. Meruva said Trucks consistently sees startups deploy within a few months and with less than $1 million raised. (Meruva wouldn't name names, but the firm has invested in some of them.)
Beyond the Robotaxi: Surprising Startup Mix
Of the 81 startups that pitched Trucks VC, I mistakenly assumed most would be applying their AV tech to construction, warehouses, agriculture, and mining. Those were in the mix. But what surprised me was the growing number of startups pitching pure-play robotaxi businesses — and many are positioning themselves as direct competitors to Waymo.
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via TechCrunch