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TechCrunch Mobility: The AI skills arms race is coming for automotive
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!
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.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
The federal government has been urged to embrace Artificial Intelligence (AI) and increase domestic investment in health research to safeguard Nigeria’s public health system amid declining international donor funding.
Alash’le Abimiku, Executive Director of the International Research Centre of Excellence (IRCE) at the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN), made the call at a news conference in Abuja.
The briefing was held ahead of the fourth IRCE Annual Scientific Symposium scheduled to take place from 31 August to 1 September.
The symposium is themed “Shaping the Future of Public Health Research through Sustainable Funding, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) and Innovation.”
Ms Abimiku said recent cuts in global health funding, including support from major international donors, underscored the need for Nigeria to strengthen local financing for research and build sustainable capacity.
She said stronger domestic investment would help the country address emerging health challenges and reduce its vulnerability to fluctuations in external funding.
Ms Abimiku said that many Nigerian researchers relied heavily on international grants, warning that shrinking research budgets could weaken the country’s ability to compete for funding and generate locally relevant evidence.
“We are asking government to begin investing in research. It may not be as much as international funding, but it can keep researchers productive, build capacity and sustain innovation.
“Disease outbreaks will not stop because funding has been reduced. HIV, cancer, sickle cell disease, Lassa fever and future pandemics will continue to challenge us, so we must prepare,” she said.
According to her, AI presents an opportunity to improve research productivity, accelerate data analysis and strengthen evidence-based decision-making when deployed responsibly and ethically.
She, however, cautioned researchers against over-dependence on AI, emphasising that innovation, critical thinking and scientific curiosity must remain central to the research process.
“AI can summarise years of research within seconds, but researchers must continue to ask critical questions, experiment and innovate.
“We must use AI to enhance, not replace, scientific thinking,” she said.
The symposium
Ms Abimiku explained that the symposium would explore how AI and machine learning could complement reduced research funding by improving efficiency while safeguarding data privacy and ethical standards.
She added that a pre-symposium hackathon had been introduced to expose researchers, healthcare professionals, and young innovators to practical AI tools to solve public health challenges.
According to her, the initiative is designed to bridge the gap between experienced researchers and younger professionals already familiar with emerging AI technologies.
Ms Abimiku urged policymakers, industry leaders and researchers to collaborate to develop sustainable research funding mechanisms that reduce Nigeria’s dependence on foreign support.
She cited South Africa’s model of competitive, government-funded research grants as an example of how countries could sustain scientific innovation despite reductions in international funding.
Also speaking, Sophia Osawe, head of research operations at IRCE, said the centre’s Inform Africa programme was already deploying AI and machine learning to strengthen Nigeria’s preparedness for disease outbreaks.
Ms Osawe explained that the programme used big data to predict disease trends and identify communities requiring urgent interventions, including vaccine deployment during pandemics such as HIV and COVID-19.
“These AI-powered tools help the government identify where interventions are most needed so resources can be deployed more efficiently and lives protected,” she said.
Similarly, James Onyemata, head of molecular diagnostics at IRCE, emphasised Nigeria’s strategic role in regional disease surveillance and genomic monitoring.
READ ALSO: Top AI CEOs speak about regulation of artificial intelligence, challenges, opportunities
According to him, with Nigeria accounting for about half of West Africa’s population, genomic surveillance data generated in the country are essential for developing vaccines effective against circulating virus strains.
“If we do not provide this information, vaccines developed elsewhere may not adequately protect populations in West Africa because they may not target the variants circulating here,” Onyemata said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the symposium will continue with technical sessions on ethical AI, genomic surveillance, pandemic preparedness, sustainable research financing and innovations aimed at strengthening Nigeria’s public health system.
(NAN)
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The National Pension Commission (PenCom) says only seven states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) are fully implementing the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) and the Contributory Defined Benefits Scheme (CDBS).
PenCom disclosed this in its first-quarter report on pension implementation, based on an update from its States Operations Department.
The report showed that Lagos, Kaduna, Edo, Osun, Ekiti, Ondo and Jigawa states, alongside the FCT, had fully implemented the CPS/CDBS.
It also showed that 13 states were at various stages of partial implementation of the schemes.
The states are Abia, Anambra, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Benue, Delta, Kano, Katsina, Kogi, Niger, Ogun, Oyo and Rivers.
According to the report, 10 states have pension laws that are currently inactive.
It said six states — Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, Nasarawa, Sokoto and Taraba — had inactive CPS laws, while Adamawa, Gombe, Kebbi and Zamfara had inactive CDBS laws.
The commission further reported that six states were still at the bill stage in their efforts to implement the CPS.
They are Akwa Ibom, Borno, Cross River, Kwara, Plateau and Yobe.
PenCom said 18 states and the FCT had established dedicated Pension Bureaux to administer the scheme.
The commission’s update covers all 36 states of the federation and the FCT.
The CPS, introduced by the Pension Reform Act 2004 and retained under the Pension Reform Act 2014, is designed to ensure regular pension contributions by employers and employees towards retirement benefits.
PenCom has continued to encourage states to adopt and effectively implement the CPS to ensure sustainable pension arrangements for their workers.
(NAN)
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