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Nuro receives driverless testing permit ahead of Uber robotaxi service launch

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Nuro has been granted a permit to begin driverless testing of Lucid Gravity SUVs equipped with its autonomous tech on California public roads — vehicles that will eventually be used in Uber’s premium robotaxi service. But the Silicon Valley-based startup, backed by Nvidia and Uber, says it isn’t quite ready to begin.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles, the agency that regulates the testing and deployment of autonomous vehicles in the state, confirmed to TechCrunch on Tuesday that it modified Nuro’s driverless AV permit to include Lucid Gravity vehicles.

Nuro has held a driverless permit for six years, but it only applied to operate a low-speed delivery vehicle — a program that was scrapped when the startup pivoted its business model to focus on licensing its technology to companies like Uber.

This latest driverless permit allows Nuro to test the Lucid vehicles without a human safety operator behind the wheel. Nuro spokesperson David Salguero told TechCrunch the company expects to begin driverless testing later this year, without providing further information on timing.

The driverless permit is one of many regulatory hurdles that Nuro must clear before Uber can launch its premium robotaxi service. Nuro will also have to receive a driverless ride-hailing permit from the California Public Utilities Commission and a deployment permit from the DMV.

For now, Nuro and Uber are testing the Lucid vehicles in autonomous mode with a human safety operator in the driver’s seat. Last month, that testing was expanded to allow Uber employees to request an autonomous ride in a Lucid robotaxi — with a human safety operator still on board — through the Uber app.

As Nuro makes progress on testing, Uber has upped its commitment to Lucid.

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When the three-way deal was announced in July 2025, Uber said it would invest $300 million in Lucid and buy 20,000 robotaxi-ready Gravity vehicles. That has since been expanded to $500 million and a minimum of 35,000 robotaxis, with the agreement changing to include at least 10,000 Gravity SUVs and 25,000 EVs built on Lucid’s upcoming mid-size platform.

Those EVs will be equipped with Nuro’s autonomous vehicle system, which is powered by Nvidia’s Drive AGX Thor computer. The Lucid Gravity robotaxi, which was revealed in January, is outfitted with high-resolution cameras, solid-state lidar sensors, and radars that help the self-driving system perceive the real-world environment and operate within it.

Uber has also made a multimillion-dollar investment in Nuro.

Lucid has delivered 75 engineering vehicles to Nuro and Uber and testing and mileage accumulation is ongoing in several cities throughout the United States, the EV maker disclosed during its first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday.

Lucid said Tuesday it is on track for commercial robotaxi operations to begin in late 2026. It is possible that those robotaxi operations will not be driverless or will be limited in some other way, depending on regulatory approvals.

Still, Lucid executives struck a positive tone during the call noting that all the development and certifications are moving along as expected.

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Dangote Cement suspends proposed London listing

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Dangote Cement Plc has put its proposed listing on the London Stock Exchange on hold, citing current market conditions and the company’s strategic priorities.

The company disclosed this in a regulatory filing signed by Edward Imoedemhe, the company secretary, following a meeting of its board of directors on Tuesday.

In May, Dangote Cement announced it was in early talks over a potential London listing, a move that would help widen its access to overseas investors and capital.

The company later, in July, explained that the faster and more practical listing process in the United Kingdom influenced its preference for London over Dubai for the secondary listing.

On Tuesday, the cement producer said it will not proceed with the secondary listing, noting that its shares remain listed on the Nigerian Exchange Group, and that the decision will not affect the company’s operations.

“The Company’s ordinary shares remain listed on the NGX, and this decision does not in any way affect the Company’s operations or business plans,” Dangote Cement added.

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READ ALSO: Dangote Cement’s nine-month profit jumps 31% as revenue hits N3.8 trillion

The company said it will remain focused on delivering sustainable value to its shareholders and building on its strong market position.

Dangote Cement is majority-owned by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, who launched the continent’s largest-ever initial public offering in September for his oil refinery.

Dangote Cement, with a production capacity of 55 million tonnes per annum, has a footprint in 11 African countries, including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Zambia, Tanzania, and Côte d’Ivoire, among others.

The corporation’s nine-month profit in 2026 jumped 31 per cent, while its revenue hit N3.8 trillion, boosted by improved revenue from cement and clinker sales.


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X launches its own clipping feature to spur influencer engagement

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Over the past few years, X has released a number of features to make itself a friendlier hub for influencers. The latest effort to attract social media talent? Its own clipping tool.

Clipping is the pivotal social media technique by which longer videos are spliced into TikTok-attention-span length “clips” and then strategically posted to engage as many eyeballs (and, thus, derive as much ad revenue) as possible.

On Monday, X announced the tool, which, from what we can tell, appears to be little more than a straightforward video-trimming feature that lets users edit videos and post them to X.

The site says that every clip includes a “Clip from” label that links back to the original video from which it was derived, allowing X users to see more about the creator and the creator’s content.

“Grab your favorite moment from any video, add your take, and post it without leaving X,” the company posted.

The platform added that both creators and clippers can “earn from views on the clip through Original Content Rewards,” X’s rewards program. The program is only available for eligible creators and pays out based on specific levels of audience engagement.

In many cases, influencers pay special firms to handle clipping for them. More and more large companies are also turning to such services to run marketing campaigns, and the technique has been used in political campaigns as well.

Over the last several years, X has tried to compete with other social sites by expanding the kind of content it supports. To take on sites like YouTube, X introduced long-form videos in 2022 (when the site was still known as Twitter), and they have since taken off on the platform. To be more like Substack, it long ago dispensed with the site’s traditional character limits and introduced long-form blog posts, which are available to premium subscribers.

X has kept at it this year. In March, it added a feature called “exclusive threads” that lets creators put parts of a thread behind a paywall so only subscribers can read them, and in July it launched a live-streaming studio and set aside $1 million for creators who go live.

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