TechCrunch Mobility: A new, bigger AV boom is here

Trucks VC has seen a surge in pitches from 81 new autonomous vehicle startups in 2026, a 2/3 increase from last year, and believes a second, potentially larger AV boom is underway, fueled by technological breakthroughs such as foundational AI models like Nvidia's Alpamayo and Qwen's general-purpose vision-language-action models. These models enable end-to-end AV systems and make it easier for startups to deploy AVs quickly and cheaply. The barrier to entry is now lower, with startups able to deploy in a few months and with less than $1 million raised. Trucks VC has invested in some of these startups, but has not named them.