AV

Uber Cancels Robotaxi and Flying Taxi Trips

This week, the ride-hailing food delivery giant said it would “sell” Advanced Technologies Group to Aurora Innovation. Uber also offloaded Elevate, its flying taxi division, to Joby Aviation.  

How the ATG “sale” is structured: Uber gives Aurora $400 million in cash plus ATG, and gets a 26% stake in the startup. The deal values ATG at ~$4 billion, a 45% haircut from when SoftBank, Toyota, and Denso piled $1 billion into the unit last year. 

• ATG employees and external investors get a 14% stake in Aurora, which is now a decacorn ($10 billion) with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi as its newest board member.

ATG, Meet Aurora

The Silicon Valley startup is led by Chris Urmson, a veteran of DARPA’s Grand Challenge and Google’s early self-driving mafia. 

Uber rushed to roll out autonomous vehicles. Aurora, by comparison, has gradually expanded testing of its vehicle-agnostic virtual “Driver” in the Bay Area, Pittsburgh, and DFW. Though a few automakers have scuttled partnerships with Aurora, its strategy has provided go-to-market flexibility. 

• Earlier this year, the pandemic put the brakes on autonomous ride-hailing services.
• In April, Urmson told us he didn’t expect the new normal to “delay our progress in the long-term,” citing Aurora’s investment in simulation software and virtual testing. 
• In July, Aurora announced its first product would be in trucking. 

Back-of-the-envelope: Aurora passed 600 employees in October. ATG had 1,200 at its height. Even with ATG cuts, it’s likely Aurora’s headcount will double.

Trucking represents a different problem-set than urban driving (Uber’s focus). But ATG’s know-how and R&D will likely come in handy somewhere in Aurora’s tech portfolio. 

Big picture

As self-driving consolidation continues, just a few companies could emerge with control of the core technology. 

Uber won’t be on that list, but self-driving isn’t out of the equation. It will eventually capture demand for autonomous rides. But Uber must wait on Aurora (or someone else) to fully develop the technology for passenger cars, then license it, then plug robotaxis (and flying taxis) into the network. 

+ About those flying taxis: Head here for details on the Uber-Joby deal.  

EV

Solid Progress

Fresh off the heels of DeepMind’s breakthrough in a 50-year-old biotech problem, QuantumScape—the secretive $4.3 billion startup—might have solved a 40-year-old battery one. 

Rewind: Electric vehicles have come a long way, but they’re still fighting persistent problems with range, charge time, long-term cell capacity, and battery safety. To level with their gas-powered rivals, they need one key piece of equipment: a solid-state battery. There’s never been a major contender. 

...Until now? 

The Volkswagen-backed startup first announced its progress toward a solid-state battery months ago, but it’s no longer all talk: Yesterday, it released test results for the first time. And experts say they look promising. 

• The battery enables charging to 80% capacity in 15 minutes, according to QuantumScape’s data—while existing options on the market take about an hour to charge. 

Big picture: If the science holds up, this has big implications for the future of EVs—as QuantumScape CEO Jagdeep Singh told us in September, the “biggest car company is basically saying they can't wait to put these in their cars by 2025.”  

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AI

The AI Crystal Ball

Things Covid-19 has accelerated: streaming demand, collective existential dread, nap dress sales, and—according to 52% of businesses—investment in AI. 

That last one is from PwC’s annual AI report, which surveyed companies in sectors like industrial manufacturing, financial services, health, technology, and retail. 

Major  

Most respondents plan to lean more on AI next year. 

• In the 2020 report, 58% of respondents were either actively using AI or had plans to deploy it. 
• Now, 79% of businesses are using AI in some capacity—and looking ahead, 86% said AI will be a “mainstream technology” at their company in 2021. 

But, but, but: Businesses are shifting their AI priorities in a big way—from “grunt work” tasks toward higher-level, strategic applications. 

• In 2020, 35% of businesses considered automating routine tasks (think: digitizing documents, automating invoices). 
• In 2021, they plan to direct the majority of AI investment $$ toward workforce planning (58%), simulation modeling (48%), supply chain resilience (48%), scenario planning (43%), and demand projection (42%). 

Behind the shift: “Normal business, pretty much, is no longer ‘normal,’” Anand Rao, PwC’s global AI lead and the report’s author, told us. “Sector by sector, the demand estimation is very uncertain...so last year’s data doesn’t help you in any way.” 

BITS & BYTES

Stat: The Federal Communications Commission announced $9.2 billion in funding for companies to provide internet to 5.2 million unserved households and businesses. SpaceX won $886 million to serve nearly 643,000 spots in 35 states. 

Quote: “There is a feeling in Brussels that online platforms have become ‘too big to care.’”—Thierry Breton, EU commissioner for the internal market, cited by the FT. 

Listen: Business Casual quizzed GM CEO Mary Barra on the automaker’s $27 billion, five-year pivot to electrification. 

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• FireEye says its systems were breached by nation-state actors, who made off with some internal “Red Team” hacking tools. The FBI and Microsoft are assisting the publicly traded cybersecurity firm with its internal investigation.  
• Snapchat announced a $3.5 million AR creation fund for 2021 at its Lens Fest developer summit. 
• Project Titan, Apple’s secretive self-driving initiative, is now part of AI chief John Giannandrea’s portfolio, sources told Bloomberg.  
• The 5G speeds of Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile are “neck-and-neck in five major cities,” according to recent Opensignal tests. At the moment, South Korea’s 5G networks are running laps around everyone else’s. 
• Huawei has tested facial recognition software that could recognize members of the Uighur Muslim minority group and send alerts to police, WaPo reports.
• Square committed $10 million to companies that mine bitcoin with renewable energy. 

TRIVIA

Today’s trivia is dedicated to the audiophiles. What’s the occasion? Apple’s AirPods Max. Test your knowledge of all the hardware and software in the AirPods audioverse...

...and take the quiz here. 

TECH THINGAMABOBS

For the final frontier: A Reddit user created a series of data visualizations inspired by all seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Think: crew member word clouds, alien race mentions plotted by season, and a bar chart of which characters converse most often. 

For decentralized art: Micah Johnson, an MLB player-turned-artist, worked with blockchain-based art platform Async Art to create an interactive piece—then sold it for $120,000. A downtown LA billboard will display the art through Jan. 10. 

For volumetric cats: “Samsung’s 3D scanner is legit,” they say. 

ICYMI

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

• New research: Bringing AI to IoT 
• Amazon re:Invent recap
• DeepMind’s breakthrough