Mobileye has stopped testing autonomous vehicles in New York, Emerging Tech Brew has learned.

Mona Bruno, a spokesperson for NYC’s Department of Transportation, confirmed via email that the Intel-owned autonomous-vehicle startup had canceled its NYC testing program.

• The news comes 15 months after Mobileye first announced it had expanded its robotaxi testing program to NYC, and days after the company filed for an IPO.

“If autonomous vehicles are to work anywhere, we firmly believe, they need to be able to work everywhere,” the company said in a July 2021 blog post announcing the NYC expansion, after securing what was, at the time, the only permit to test AVs in NYC’s notoriously hectic and congested streets.

In an emailed statement, Mobileye spokesperson Alexis Blais told Emerging Tech Brew that its initial round of tests in New York had been completed as planned.

She added, “We test our autonomous vehicles in cities worldwide, to ensure that our technology can be flexible enough to adapt to local conditions and reach an impactful scale. We frequently rotate our test vehicles into new cities, such as adding Miami and Detroit this year, and plan to keep doing so.”

Read the full story on-site.—HF

If you’ve read this newsletter—or anything that even grazes the world of business—you can probably guess which direction global venture-capital funding went in Q3. (Hint: It’s not up.)

By the numbers: Last quarter, global VC funding fell to $81 billion, per Crunchbase, down sharply from both the previous quarter and year. Q3 VC funding was down 33% from its Q2 2022 total of ~$120 billion, and 53% year over year.

• Last quarter’s $81 billion was the lowest in more than two years, since Q1 2020, in which $70.6 billion was invested. It’s roughly equal to the amount invested in Q4 2019.

As has been the case in recent months, late-stage companies shouldered an outsized share of the pullback in Q3—funding for that set of startups dropped 40% quarter over quarter and 63% year over year. Early-stage companies saw a 25% QoQ decline and a 39% YoY drop, while seed-stage funding fell 24% QoQ and was “close to flat” YoY, per Crunchbase.

Zoom out: Despite the decline, VCs are sitting on an enormous amount of dry powder: In the US, for example, VC funds have already raised $150.9 billion to invest in startups, per Pitchbook, breaking last year’s record despite the year not being over yet. That blistering pace began to slow down in Q3, per Pitchbook, but the fact remains that there is plenty of capital on the sidelines. The question is when and how it will make into the mix.

Read the story on-site.—DM

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Stat: These days, the vast majority (80+%) of travelers entering the US are verified by a controversial technology: facial recognition.

Quote: “Yes, we have businesses outside of gaming…Yes, they generate revenue. Yes, that makes us a healthier company so we can invest more in gaming when we want to. But it also advances our understanding of technology so we can make an ever-better game engine.”—Unity CEO John Riccitiello to Games Industry

Read: What 13 robotics experts think of Tesla’s new robot prototype.

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Three of the following news stories are true, and one...we made up. Can you spot the odd one out?

• A scientist has attracted controversy for attempting to edit out the gene for cat claws using CRISPR.
• A startup claims its robots make better french fries than humans—and in less time, too.
• Gatorade has created a sweat-activated smart water bottle.
• Oh, nice, someone invented cyborg cockroaches.

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• How Truist, product of the decade’s biggest bank merger, built its first AI assistant
• How one grocery chain used AI to slash food waste
• Why United Airlines is betting $1 billion on flying cars