TechCrunch Mobility: The AI skills arms race is coming for automotive

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There is a bit of a theme emerging in transportation — and really every industry: AI is creating jobs for some at the loss of others. 

General Motors, for instance, laid off more than 10% of its IT department, or about 600 salaried employees — in a deliberate skills swap. This won’t translate into a one-to-one exchange, which means there will likely be a net-negative job loss. But GM insists it is hiring and those layoffs have made room for it to recruit IT people with AI-focused backgrounds.

The most sought-after capabilities are AI-native development, data engineering and analytics, cloud-based engineering, agent and model development, prompt engineering, and new AI workflows. In practical terms, GM is looking for people who know how to build with AI from the ground up — designing the systems, training the models, and engineering the pipelines — not just use AI as a productivity tool.

Those AI job losses are mounting in the automotive sector. CNBC calculated that Ford, GM, and Stellantis have cut a combined total of more than 20,000 U.S. salaried jobs, or 19% of their combined workforces, from recent employment peaks this decade. While there are a variety of reasons for these cuts, they are generally connected to technological changes, including AI.

Companies are leaning heavily into AI, although anecdotes from some engineers and founders suggests not all of these businesses know quite what they’re doing with it yet. 

Samsara is one company that seems to have figured out a revenue-generating use case. The company has spent the last decade giving its customers cameras to mount inside millions of trucks for driver monitoring, theft prevention, and helping with liability claims. The company took that mountain of data and trained its own model that can detect potholes and determine how quickly they are deteriorating. The company is pitching this product to cities and announced it has several under contract, including Chicago. 

A little bird

Nothing this week, although I am working on a fun one! Reach out anytime with insights, tips, or just because. You can reach us via email or Signal.

Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.

Deals!

You might have noticed that Rivian’s spinoff company Mind Robotics raised another $400 million, just two months after raising $500 million. And that pace got me thinking about its founder RJ Scaringe and his innate ability to get VC and institutional backers to invest in his ideas and projects.

I calculated that investors have poured $12.3 billion into Scaringe’s three startups — Also, Mind Robotics, and Rivian. That figure doesn’t include the close to $12 billion in gross proceeds raised in Rivian’s IPO, nor did I count the more recent strategic deals with Volkswagen Group and Uber — which together could add nearly $7 billion to Rivian’s coffers. 

You can read my whole riff on the topic here. But if you don’t feel like clicking, here is one item that stood out. I spoke to a number of insiders and investors and they all mentioned Scaringe’s ability to give undivided attention to whoever he’s talking to — whether it’s an investor, supplier, or exec — and make them feel like the most important person in the room. 

It’s yet another piece of evidence in my long-standing case against multitasking. Debate me!

Other deals that got my attention …

Arkeus, an Australian startup that developed perception software for autonomous drones and aircraft, raised $18 million in a Series A round led by QIC Ventures. Other investors include R+VC, Folklore Ventures, DYNE Ventures, Main Sequence Ventures, Salus Ventures, and Beaten Zone.

Aseon Labs, a Redwood City, California, startup that has developed a depot in a box for charging, cleaning, and inspecting autonomous fleets, came out of stealth with undisclosed backing by Y Combinator. 

Rapido raised $240 million in a round led by Prosus, and that values the Indian ride-hailing company at $3 billion. Existing investors, including WestBridge Capital and Accel, participated. The round was part of a larger $730 million primary and secondary financing.

Quantum Systems, a Germany-based drone startup backed by Peter Thiel, is in talks to raise around €600 million ($703 million) with companies like Airbus and Blackstone as investors, Bloomberg reported.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Is Redwood Materials ready for an IPO? Senior reporter Sean O’Kane interviewed the company’s new CFO, Deepak Ahuja, whose name will be familiar to anyone who follows Tesla. Ahuja was Tesla’s former finance chief and most recently held a similar position at drone company Zipline. 

Tesla Robotaxis have crashed at least twice since July 2025 while a teleoperator was remotely driving the vehicles, according to newly unredacted information submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Uber is expanding in India with two new engineering campuses that can fit about 9,600 people and a data center partnership aimed at supporting its overall product development and infrastructure operations.

Waymo issued a software update to its fleet of nearly 4,000 vehicles to help them avoid flooded roads as part of a recall announced by the NHTSA. Important note: The company hasn’t fully solved the problem of how its vehicles behave in these conditions.

One more thing …

Disrupt, our flagship annual tech conference in San Francisco, will be held in October. And while that is a ways off, I wanted to share one bit of news. We will have six stages this year, which you can read about in more detail here. One worth noting for this crowd is our AI in the Real World Stage.It will be here that we’ll dig into robotics, autonomous systems, manufacturing, defense, and industrial operations.