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๐ The Core Development
Iโve joked here and on the Equity and Autonocast podcasts that the autonomous vehicle industry feels a lot like 2016, at least in terms of the buzziness surrounding the sector.
But a recent conversation with Trucks VC partner Puneeth Meruva has me rethinking that comparison. Thereโs evidence that 2026 is even hotter โ at least by certain measures โ than those frothy dealmaking days of 2016 and 2017.
๐ Background & Sector Context
Trucks VC, which specializes in early-stage investing, has fielded pitches from 81 new autonomous vehicle startups so far in 2026 โ two-thirds more than last year and enough to surpass the boom years of a decade ago. The VC firm argues in a new blog post that weโre in the midst of a second, even bigger AV wave fueled by technological breakthroughs. Yes, Iโm talking about AI.
โFor 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,โ Meruva told me. โAnd I think the foundation models now provide a technical architecture that makes those end-to-end systems possible.โ
๐ Industry & Real-World Impact
These foundational 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 like Nvidiaโs Alpamayo and Qwenโs general-purpose vision-language-action models has made it even easier for startups to get off the ground.
Benchmark Telemetry & EV Fuel Savings
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๐ฎ Strategic Outlook & What Lies Ahead
The barrier to entry is lower than ever before. Meruva said Trucks is consistently seeing startups deploy within a few months and with less than $1 million raised. (And while Meruva wouldnโt name names, the firm has invested in some of them.)
Of these 81 startups that pitched Trucks VC, I mistakenly assumed most would be applying their AV tech to construction, warehouse, agriculture, and mining. And yes, 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.
