Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free ' just click TechCrunch Mobility! But a recent conversation with Trucks VC partner Puneeth Meruva has me rethinking that comparison. There's evidence that 2026 is even hotter ' at least by certain measures ' than those 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. The VC firm argues in a new blog post that we're in the midst of a second, even bigger AV wave fueled by technological breakthroughs. Yes, I'm talking about AI. '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...
learn more
