Episode 272 | Autonomy Markets: Uber’s Autonomy Push, Hesai’s Make-or-Break Moment, NVIDIA’s Big Plans

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Walt’s recent trip to San Francisco, where he observed more aggressive driving from Waymo vehicles and spotted a FasTrak transponder—hinting that the great highway unlock is imminent.

In the markets, Aurora and Lyft reported earnings, with Aurora’s market cap soaring to $17 billion—triple Lyft’s $5 billion. On its earnings call, Aurora emphasized its driver-out readiness and their hardware kit approach, mirroring Kodiak’s SensorPods. If hardware kits are the future of autonomy, power could shift from OEMs to autonomous driving developers, opening new market opportunities and validating Kodiak’s OEM-agnostic strategy.

And then there’s NVIDIA. What if they acquired an autonomous driving developer and vertically integrated? How would the market respond? What would it mean for chip sales? As fragmentation grows in the autonomous vehicle market, so does Uber’s advantage. Opportunity abounds.

Episode Chapters

0:00 Walt’s San Francisco Trip

1:54 Hesai LiDAR

6:19 Waymo’s More Assertive Driving

7:37 Should we be Concerned about Zoox?

13:08 Aurora Earnings

16:43 Autonomous Driving Hardware Kits

21:43 Should NVIDIA Vertically Integrate an Autonomous Driving Stack?

26:24 Nuro’s Licensing Opportunity

30:29 Uber’s Next Autonomy Partner—May Mobility?

33:50 Autonomous Vehicle Fleet Management & Financing

38:00 DoorDash’s Autonomous Delivery Ambitions

40:57 Next Week

Recorded on Saturday, February 15, 2025

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