The Era of Being Measured

Executive Summary

Waymo has ended its robotaxi partnership with Uber in Phoenix, transitioning to a direct-to-consumer model, a move Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant predict will replicate sequentially in Austin and Atlanta as Waymo hits density thresholds.

Meanwhile, Agility Robotics is merging with Churchill Capital in a $2.5 billion SPAC, which AUTNMY AI’s OMEGA frames as a ‘forced transparency event’ that will stress-test every unaudited commercial claim.

The Road to Autonomy launched the Confidence Indices, the first cryptographically sealed benchmarks tracking market confidence in commercialization across robotaxi, autonomous trucking, autonomous driving licensing, and delivery bot sectors. OMEGA’s overarching signal is that the autonomy economy has exited the era of pitching and entered the era of being measured.

Key Autonomy Signals Episode Questions Answered

Autonomy Signals Topics & Timestamps

[00:00] Signal 1: Waymo/Uber Divorce: Predictable and Repeatable

Waymo and Uber end their Phoenix robotaxi partnership after 948 days, and the playbook is now clear: once an operator builds density and consumer trust, Uber’s demand aggregation becomes expendable. Grayson predicts Nuro / Lucid takes Phoenix and Austin and Atlanta may be next to roll off.

[34:29] Signal 2: Agility Robotics’ $2.5B merger with Churchill Capital XI

SPACs are back, and Agility Robotics wants to be the first pure-play humanoid robotics company in the public markets. But going public is a forced transparency event, SEC disclosures will stress-test the 98% task success rate, the $300M contingent backlog, and a warehouse data moat that world models may erode.

[55:06] Signal 3: The Road to Autonomy Confidence Indices Launch

A first-of-its-kind, cryptographically sealed benchmark tracking market confidence in robotaxis, licensing, autonomous trucks, and delivery bots. The early data already tells a story: robotaxi confidence is rising while the market stays unsure on trucking.

[1:04:19] AUTNMY AI

AUTNMY AI is an applied intelligence firm whose mission is to develop a field-tested, ground-truth understanding of how the Autonomy Economy is being built and translate that understanding into the intelligence, foresight, and counsel that help the world’s leading institutional investors navigate the most consequential industrial transition of this century.

Full Autonomy Signals Episode Transcript

Signals of the Week

Grayson Brulte: Rob, another week, another week of big news and a big week of signals, and the signal that you and I have been following for quite a while now is heating up. It appears that Uber and Waymo, that divorce is accelerating. That’s a signal. And then SPACs, another signal, they’re hot again. And then lo and behold, we launched the confidence indices, which we’ll get into. But before we begin, thank you to CNBC and to TechCrunch for properly crediting The Road to Autonomy for breaking the news around the pending Uber-Waymo divorce as it relates to Uber, Waymo no longer getting together in Phoenix. And to our wonderful sponsor, KPMG, thank you so much as always. Rob, let’s get into the signals. I gotta tell you, Omega had some really great titles this week. Signal one, Waymo-Uber divorce: predictable and repeatable. Signal number two, the Agility SPAC: the black cloud of SPAC 1.0 is lifting, or is it? And then three, The Road to Autonomy launches the confidence indices. Let’s start with the pending Uber-Waymo divorce. What do you make of that signal?

Waymo-Uber Phoenix Split: What Happened and Why

Rob Grant: Yeah. This is, this is something that we’ve been on top of for a long time. Real quick, though, happy birthday to America, 250 years this week, really exciting. and also let’s go US Men’s National Team in, in today’s match. So we’re, we’re excited for that here over at Autonomy AI and the Road to Autonomy. Now, what is even more exciting to us, because we’re autonomy economy nerds, is the Waymo-Uber divorce. As you first reported many days ago and that was later confirmed by both Waymo and Uber, as of June this month, Waymo and Uber have concluded their robotaxi partnership in Phoenix, which was the only market where the Waymo previously operated its own Waymo One app alongside Uber’s app as well. So in Phoenix, Waymo is transitioning to an exclusive direct-to-consumer model, leveraging its established local scale. Thank you, Uber, for helping that out. Conversely, Uber is actively seeking a replacement autonomous driving partner for the Phoenix market to maintain its multimodal service offerings. We have some thoughts on who that could be. And it should be noted, the partnership between Uber and Waymo right now remains active in other markets, such as Austin and Atlanta, where Waymo is continuing to use and utilize Uber’s demand aggregation. We also have some thoughts on how long those partnerships may remain. In the end, Uber continues its aggressive expansion of its autonomous network through partnerships to hedge against reliance on any single supplier, and Waymo is moving forward to own that consumer relationship

Predicting Uber’s Next Phoenix Partner: Nuro / Lucid

Grayson Brulte: There’s a lot of moving parts, a l- a lot to break down there. I’ll go on the record and make a prediction, which I don’t think is a big prediction, that the Phoenix partner for Uber will most likely be Nuro Lucid. You might say, “Why?” Well, the Lucid factory is in that region, so technically the vehicles could come right off the factory line into service. So that, that’s something to watch there. And then I gotta tell you, Rob, you and I are really great at watching things. So we have the Omega AI algorithm watch things, then you and I are Clouseau and we’re watching things. And this announcement comes out, we break the news on X, then CNBC, thank you again for the credit, a lot of credit to you for that. And then Bloomberg, sorry, no credit, that wasn’t very nice, runs with the story. And then lo and behold, a couple hours later, what do you know? You have a video posted on X of Dara riding with JZ, Hey Jay, in the Nuro Lucid vehicle. I’m like, “Hmm, timing. Very interesting timing.” And then the pushback might be, well, they were there with the, the PIF, the, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia delegation. Yes, but the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia made a public X statement a couple days prior to that. Hmm. A lot of questions. W- am I reading too much into this? Do you and I communicate too much, or what are your thoughts on this?

Rob Grant: No, I mean, look, you are seeing the ingredients laid out and understanding where the final meal on the menu is going. I think it is a very short matter of time before we see Uber and Nuro and Lucid publicly announce something in Phoenix. Now, whether or not those vehicles will be available for riders at the time of that announcement, probably not, but possible. I would think by the end of this year, they would attempt to have their first consumer riders in the vehicle, even if it has a safety driver still in the vehicle at that time. I, I, I think given what we’ve seen as kind of first entrees in the markets move outside of California, given the regulatory heavy nature of California, we’re gonna likely see the Uber-Nuro-Lucid partnership use its first consumer-facing rides in the Phoenix market. What we’ve seen in other is, is many folks are doing that in Texas. You know, Arizona is still very permissive requirements. I think the fact that I see a lot of Umer- Uber Gravity Lucid Gravity, Nuro things in my neighborhood literally passing me by every day I still don’t think that’s gonna happen here in California first. But I, I think you’re reading all the breadcrumbs correctly. I think that’s the next announcement for that evolution of that partnership. and I think what we will see is a concommitment, slow devolution of the partnership with Waymo. so I, I, I honestly believe it’ll be not publicly announced. We’ll have to find it just as you did and, and understand that the market maybe one day will open the Uber app in Atlanta and won’t be able to g- to, to grab a Waymo. but I do think those markets are headed for the same path, which is why the title that Omega provided for this segment is predictable and repeatable. I think what we’re seeing here is that once Waymo hits a certain level of potential utilization, fleet utilization on its own demand aggregation, consumer recognition, that it no longer needs Uber. It doesn’t n- need to share profits or revenue with Uber at that point. look, Waymo has its own app. It has direct-to-consumer owns the consumer relationship in many other markets. So I think, I think that is what we’re going to see in the next six months. Probably not at a consecutive or same time. I think we’ll see it sequentially as Uber gets as Waymo gets more confident in its demand aggregation and fleet utilization metrics, as well as infrastructure and the right permits in Atlanta and in Austin. We’ll see them kind of sequentially roll off the Uber app within the next six months.

Waymo Blows Up Uber’s Demand Aggregation Narrative

Grayson Brulte: And there’s that old saying, third time’s the charm. You might say, “Well, Grayson, why say that?” Phoenix one, Atlanta two, Austin three, third time’s a charm. I, I agree with you. And when I– y- you look at this, that partnership in Phoenix lasted roughly 948 days, our Omega algorithm calculated, based on publicly available data. The Atlanta and Austin are, are not nearly as long as that. To me, it signals that Waymo, at that time, was in a testing phase and now is clearly moving away into the demand aggregation that it has on its own. And then, in my opinion, that blows up Uber’s whole narrative. Well, you need Uber for the demand aggregation. If you go back and you read transcripts of earning calls and you read transcripts of Dara’s public i- interviews that he’s given on podcasts and various broadcast media, he talks about Uber’s gonna be the demand layer that’s gonna need to aggregate this. Well, that whole narrative has been blown up as Waymo’s proven that you do not need that. So, the big question is, the 10,000-pound gorilla in the United States, not globally, but in the United States, Waymo, is saying, “Bye bye. We, we don’t need you.” In your opinion, Rob, where does that leave Uber w- with their strategy, and do we continue to see more news out of Europe, what you and I have been covering for quite a while?

Uber’s Multi-Vendor Risk and Chinese AV Partners in Europe

Rob Grant: Yeah, look, I mean, I think what we’re seeing here in the US with this Uber and Waymo divorce is, is what we may see in other parts of the world, right? Uber’s value to an AV operator is highest during the market entry phase when the operator lacks brand awareness and rider habits, right? It’s one of the reasons that Waymo and Uber partnered in the first place. But as AVs build by an operator such as Waymo, sufficient density and consumer trust, right, it, it makes economic sense to wanna capture the total economic value of each ride, bypassing those revenue sharing agreements, right? So, so Uber’s value is high early and then definitely runs off as you move further for those operators that can afford to run its own operations, infrastructure, regulatory structure a- and charging structure, things of that nature, which not every AV operator can, right? So this is why Uber is partnered and married with 20-plus AV companies. Some of them are reliant on Uber for more than just demand aggregation. They’re reliant for capital allocation, for taking on the expense of operations and infrastructure, for taking on the expense of permitting and things of that nature. Waymo does not need Uber’s capital in that sense, so it’s just a marriage of convenience to begin with. What will be interesting to see is Uber’s partners in these international markets include really huge Chinese operators, you know, Baidu and WeRide, who outside of autonomous vehicles very much have ownership of apps that are customer-facing, right? WeRide is named WeRide because it’s derivative of WeChat, which is one of the world’s most commonly used apps in the billions in terms of people who use it. Now, what will be interesting is Can and will the Chinese companies feel comfortable operating under the Chinese name in places like Europe, right? I, I honestly believe one of the things that they’re doing with Uber over there not hide per se, but not make it as apparent that when you’re calling an Uber and you get a Baidu or you’re calling an Uber and you get a WeRide, you’re not, you’re not making that direct connection as a consumer that I’m asking a Chinese company to provide me a ride, right? You’re asking Uber to give you a ride. which, you know, has its own reputational history in the European markets, but over the last 15 years has settled in, particularly in Europe, as, as a common application that, that is well used by Europeans. so it’ll be interesting to see if those who have the backing of a, of a Baidu or have a WeRide who could honestly afford to make the same move that Waymo does, will they do it in markets where being a Chinese named, identified company, do you get the same value and same ridership and same consumer trust that you do with an Uber? I certainly think in, in the Asian markets right, in Korea, in Australia in Southeast Asia, I, I think any partnership down there will be temporary at best. I think these are markets that are very comfortable with Baidu and, and WeRide, and there are other products being used and consumed under those direct Chinese parent names. So it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out in Europe where I think there is a little bit of, of masking going on so that the consumer trust builds initially as opposed to consumer wariness about, “Oh, I’m allowing a Chinese company to move me around.”

Grayson Brulte: I am so thankful we were able to put you in a Mel Brooks movie and digitize your brain. And, and that’s truly what we did. No, I’m just kidding. We, we didn’t do that. Though it would be really cool. Mel Brooks was awesome, for the record. Is your take is, is absolutely spot on. Fantastic. And if you look at it from a European perspective, and if you compare Europe to America, you will see Chinese vehicles, electric vehicles on the roads of China. You and I both have friends that live in, in the EU, in the UK, and some of them drive BYD and Chinese vehicles. They have no problem with that. The i- individuals living in Europe, it seems, this is me personally saying, have a higher appetite to try a Chinese vehicle over time. And then some of these individuals that, that you and I both know over time like it. So perhaps, as you articulated, this is a stealth way into Europe, get comfortable with it, and then oh, by the way, Baidu, WeRide said, “Aha, we’re gonna Waymo you,” and they do the same thing. That is a, is to me, is a risk that you uncovered that’s not talked about a lot yet

Rob Grant: Yeah, I, I, I think it’s a real risk, right? I think they have the, the financial capability and, as you mentioned, the desire to own the consumer relationship. I really do think it is only a matter of time before we see that in Europe and in the Middle East. I think Uber’s in a very precarious position in terms of its relationship with the Chinese AV developers that it’s formed. I think that is going to be a temporary relationship. now you still have some players, you know, that, that we’ll see how independent they become of Uber, right? I, I’m thinking mostly of Wayve here. you know, as Wayve perhaps becomes very ingrained in the L2++ technology with Stellantis and you know, grows its partnership with an OEM directly does Wayve become more confident in its abilities than to want to own all three legs of or be a part of all three legs of the stool, which is AV developer, AV operator, and AV manufacturer. So it would have the manufacturing from Stellantis. It’s clearly the developer, but would it wanna be that direct to consumer owner and the AV operator? I would think if they have the financial wherewithal, you wanna own all three legs of the stack. It– Waymo, Waymo’s interesting ’cause they don’t own the manufacturing stack, and that’s probably their biggest risk, as we’ve always identified, right? Who are they– Who’s gonna build their vehicles? And they’ve turned, as we’ve mentioned here before, they’ve turned to the Chinese to make their vehicles. So everywhere we look, you know, China’s involved in all of this which is a whole other you know, signal to take account of. But I do think Uber will continue to look at those newer, less capitally backed financially risky AV operators in order to continue to try to be relevant in this space. And I think with that comes some, some risks, right? In terms of uniformity of ride expectations, uniformity of performance. I mean, this heterogeneous marketplace that will take place on the Uber app is both a diversification positive scenario, but also that diversification can bring its own risks in terms of lack of uniformity of rider expectations. And if you lose that rider trust, it may be from company 19, but that will affect companies seven, eight, and nine.

Grayson Brulte: I call it autonomous roulette and, and that’s a very valid point. You bring up a really interesting, before we get to the risks, ’cause that was a great segue to risk, is according to the UK House of Commons filings, SoftBank is the majority owner and/slash investor of Wayve. And, and, and why is that important? One, to, to the audience, I would highly, highly, highly recommend you read Gambling Sun by Lionel Barber, the former editor and editor of the Financial Times. It was a fascinating insight into Masa, the gentleman who controls SoftBank. And if you want to see where Masa’s going, look at their latest corporate filing with the golden goose. It’ll tell you quite a bit there. But I bring that up because years ago, oh gosh, probably 10 to 12 years ago, I had a lot of meetings with SoftBank and I don’t re- you know, if you remember this, they were coming to America and they wanted to bring a software layer called SBDrive. Initially, it was focused on bus and rural Japan, but the overall ambition was to make SBDrive a software platform for robotaxis to connect it. That was 12 years ago. Ma- Masa doesn’t let an idea go, so perhaps SoftBank wants to build their own software layer to directly compete with Uber in certain markets and put Wayve on that, or Funway for software. So, that’s a really, in my opinion, it’s a potential risk and something to monitor. It’s something that we’re gonna monitor here at Autonomy AI, which brings us to Omega’s risks. Omega broke down some really interesting risks here, and we’ll start with the first one here, Rob. Orchestration software layer fails to scale across AV fleets, degrading rider experience and partner retention. Y- You hit the nail on the head. You’re right. Let’s, I’m not gonna name names ’cause I’m gonna be polite. If you’re in robotaxi A and you have a bad experience or you get into a crash, that’s going to affect robotaxi B, C, and D because it’s all in one tier. Aggregating all this together creates, I would say, an unnecessary risk or an extended risk. What are your thoughts?

Autonomous Roulette: The Risk of Heterogeneous AV Fleets on One App

Rob Grant: Yeah, I, I mean, I think it’s really, it’s really interesting that one of the selling points originally for Uber and Lyft, right? You go back to, to Travis Kalanick’s story about not being able to get a ride on New Year’s Eve in Paris, is because the experience, the user experience was so up and down in traditional taxis, right? Sometimes you got a great person that would tell you all about the city and where you should go and what restaurant you should eat, and other times they’d leave you standing on the side of the road in the rain on New Year’s Eve. and so it was that inconsistent user experience that was the basis, the genesis for ridesharing to begin with. And now here, Uber is bringing on 20-plus different types of potential experiences, right? That could be unique in a very positive way in 20 different ways, or unique in very bad ways in 20 different ways. Everything from small things such as, like, the vehicle’s uncomfortable to sit in, the vehicle is difficult to put my luggage in, the vehicle doesn’t respond to, you know, my requests to pull over, things of that nature, which may be unique to that vehicle. But it’s through a common experience where users have a certain expectation of service that is greater than what they were used to two decades ago. So if that service now becomes up and down, and it’s not reliable and it’s not comfortable, and it’s not– or it’s, they have a bad safety experience, right? It is going to be harmful to everybody in that ecosystem. And I think, you know, this is anecdotal again, but, like, I see this with Lyft. My, I used to work at Lyft. I love Lyft still, but in ex- the experiences I’ve had with Lyft recently, it has been all over the place. And I’m like, I don’t li- you know, the, the reason I turn to these apps is I want a consistently good experience. That is what you’re starting to see out of, out of Waymo. It is, it is difficult for an AV company, one AV company that controls everything vertically, as Waymo would do or Tesla would do, to ensure that consistent 100% positive consumer experience. It is infinitely more difficult to ensure that 100% positive consumer experience when you’re dealing with 20 AV companies on one app.

Grayson Brulte: Then this is your wheelhouse, and you’re one of the smartest individuals in the world in this regulatory. Regulatory fragmentation across 15 target cities slows autonomous vehicle deployment, leaving Uber’s multi-vendor infrastructure underutilized. And when it says infrastructure, let’s not forget, you and I do a lot of research on this. There’s all the physical infrastructure that goes into that, and that is not cheap to say the least

Rob Grant: Yeah, I mean, I think, look, if you’re, if you’re a partner of Uber, you’ve got to wonder where is Uber’s priority within each market. we’ve, as we’ve talked about before, and as Uber has made a central part of their talking points with AVs, they feel that they must have a hybrid network in order for this to work, meaning some of their rides are with drivers, some of their rides are with AVs. If you’re Uber and you have to weigh whether or not to participate or in the, in the debate to allow robotaxis in New York City, for instance, are you better off saying, “No robotaxis at all. Sorry, 20 AV partners”? or are you better off because that puts you in a better position competitively to keep Waymo out, right? Like, a Waymo loss in New York City is better than a Uber win on AVs in New York City, right? That’s the calculation they’re trying to make. and then if you are allowed to operate, say, in, in Nashville, right? if Uber wants to operate there, which of its partners does it say amongst them, “I’m gonna pick partners one, seven, and five to operate in Nashville. The rest of you guys get lost.” And if Nashville is a market that’s moving forward, whereas perhaps there’s regulatory upset in the Atlanta market, but I’ve assigned partners eight, 12, and 14 to that market, you guys are kind of on the outs. So I think it’s, it’s both, like, in terms of, yes, regulatory could you left with underutilized assets in each market, which is, you know, not good, and Waymo maybe has an easier time of moving assets between markets. But if I’m Uber, it’s really the partnership relationship that I’m worried about in those instances, because I have to choose which partners get the favored markets. and then I have to hope that those favored partners perform well not each individually carrying its own different risk in terms of where is the, how far along is their AV system? How far along is their consumer operations? What are the different protocols for dealing with an incident that might happen with each different potential partner? So I think the regulatory hiccups put further pressure on those partner relationships which I think to me, if I’m a partner and I have the ability to regulate my own rollout and control my own relationship with the consumer, if I have the financial capability to do that, that’s the avenue that I would like to go.

Grayson Brulte: And that’s what makes you a great CEO. The other thing that I wanna highlight, and this is purely speculative along the same lines that you said. How do you control what, what service area vehicle A can go into? How do you control w- w- what times those vehicles can run? That’s another layer of that, that could potentially be another thorn in the side. “Okay, so we’re gonna put vehicles A out in this zone at this time.” “Oh, no, you can’t go there because then you’re gonna create competition.” It’s something to watch, and I’m going to say it out loud, Uber, I think it’s time you give clarity to the market. 20-plus public partners. At some point, there will be multiple autonomous vehicle partners/robotaxi partners operating in the same market. It’d be very nice to tell the market of how that partnership is gonna work, because there’s a lot of competition competing for that one little slice of the hybrid network. So something to, to watch there. What do you. Do you think I’m onto something, or what do you think?

Rob Grant: Think so, right? I, I mean, the way I’ve, I’m thinking about it currently, and that’s, you know, not to say that it’s, it’s the only way to think about it, is I think about do you wind up with an, an Amazon problem where folks are always like, “Is Amazon preferencing the sale of its own goods,” right? I, I sell good A, Amazon sells good A. Is, is Amazon gonna preference its own goods over mine? and then what happens when, when goods B come in? If, if goods B aren’t necessarily as good of a product, but they are saying, “Hey, Amazon, you can take more of a cut of our sales,” maybe they get preference. And so this is what I’m wondering, like, is, is, is now Uber acting as, in a sense, “Hey, if, if you cut me a better deal, I’ll prioritize your product even if it’s not as good of a product as what the consumers want.” And so I, I, I do think it raises a lot of questions. What is the priority? Can. I mean, can they have multiple AV operators on their platform in the same city competing not only with their drivers, but also with each other? how are they gonna prioritize that? Is that based upon the commercial deals and the favorability of terms to Uber over those of the consumer? Is it gonna be based upon consumer feedback? I don’t know.

Grayson Brulte: And then there’s myths and popular culture before we get to the last risk here. Does a myth start that the Kirkland Vodka available at Costco is actually Grey Goose? And somebody thinks, “Oh, well, autonomous vehicle A is really autonomous vehicle B. There, there is no difference.” And if you drink vodka, you know that there’s a, a big difference. And so we gotta watch for those myths because I love popular culture, as this audience knows, and s- and so do you. And this is the last risk, and this is a Waymo risk, ’cause this has popped up, but I will state that we have not seen any data to say this risk has had any material impact yet, but we have seen this data appear. Waymo’s price premium erodes under competi- competitive pressure from Tesla and Zoox, undermining the margin optimization thesis. That could happen because we’ve seen screenshots that Waymo is now pricing more, but it goes back to what you said, it is the consistent experience, and you can have the Grey Goose vodka with Waymo, or you can have the Kirkland vodka with Uber, where you don’t know what you’re truly getting

Rob Grant: That’s right. That’s right. Yeah, and I mean, this is a potential future risk because we haven’t seen the same type of scale out of, out of Tesla or Zoox. and so right now, you know, in Phoenix, for instance Waymo is, is just gobbling up all the extra margin from divorcing from, from Uber down there, which to be fair, right, to be fair, it was only 12 or 15 vehicles, I forget the number, that they were using. So it’s not huge, but it is very different in the Austin and Atlanta markets, where those have much more higher fleet vehicle numbers. But yeah, I, I do think, right, competition should drive down price. I mean, that is a fundamental belief of our free market system. I fundamentally believe those things. And so if anything, more competition will require better service, is really what I think. I think consumers win from lower prices and better service in a more competitive market. that being said, the– Yes, I think fundamental economics would tell you that if the prices go down, the, the margin optimization that we’re seeing from Uber’s and Waymo’s divorce on the Waymo side does shrink. But if the market is growing which in order to, to feed these three competitors, I think it will need to even if it’s a smaller take per ride, if there are more rides, you still wind up ahead.

Grayson Brulte: Still wind up ahead at the bottom line as autonomy scales to consumer wins. Which brings us to Omega’s take, Rob. Omega’s got a really great take here. “The Waymo-Uber Phoenix split is not a breakup. It is the first obs- observable proof point of a market maturity gated vertical integration playbook that Waymo will replicate in the Austin and Atlanta markets as those markets hit density thresholds. Simultaneously, Uber is engineering a multi-vendor orchestration layer designed to commoditize every autonomous vehicle provider, including Waymo, meaning both companies are executing rationale structurally, adversarial strategies that will produce escalating decoupling across all shared markets. The meta signal is that the partnership economy of autonomous vehicle deployment, where OEMs and platforms co-distribute, is entering a terminal phase as both sides accumulate sufficient scale to internalize the margin they previously shared.” That’s a very in-depth, meaty take. Very good. Your thoughts?

Rob Grant: I 100% agree with this take. I, I do think we are– The only thing that I would kinda caveat is I think we’re entering that terminal phase. I think it will take a while to play out. I think it will play out much quicker between Waymo and Uber here in, in the United States. but it’ll be interesting to see what happens with other AV developers that seem to be quickly on the rise, like W-Wayve, as we’ve talked about. Does Motional reach a point Avride right? It, they have what we estimate to be around 400 vehicles on the Uber platform in the T-Texas and Dallas area. if they are able to continue to scale in one or two more markets with Uber, at what point do they say, “Well, we’ve got our own name recognition. People seem to like the rides that we give. Why am I subjugating my priority rides to Uber’s priorities writ large?” And so I, I think that’ll be interesting to watch in the States. I think overseas it’ll take a little longer ’cause I do think while we have very strong Chinese partners with Uber, they will be, I think, a year, 18 months behind this separation. So I would, I would expect maybe to start to see Baidu or WeRide separate from the Uber app beginning in maybe mid-2028. and so I I, I think that will happen eventually, and I think it may even happen sooner in the Middle East. Maybe that’s a 20- late 2027 beginning of the end of those relationships as, as Baidu and WeRide establish their own names and Pony establish their own names in the UAE, in Saudi Arabia, in other markets there

Signal Two: Agility Robotics’ $2.5 Billion SPAC with Churchill Capital

Grayson Brulte: What it goes back to, the demand aggregation narrative has blown up. And once the brand is established, the demand is established, which to me, and this is a prediction again, Uber will be forced to vertically integrate once again, and I’ll call it ATG 2.0. They will have to acquire a robotaxi autonomous vehicle company and vertically integrate it. I have my thoughts on who those are. Our clients know who we think that are. We’re not gonna disclose that publicly. If you’re interested in, in learning more about our, you can call, I use a Bloomberg term, our professional services. Send an email to [email protected]. Rob and I provide a lot of counsel to institutional clients because there is some movement there, which brings us to signal two, Rob. SPACs are back. I remember the Business Week big things called SPAC Attack. And there’s this one c- one company, boy, they like SPACs. They’re on number 11 now, Ch- Churchill. They keep going. They were in SPAC 1.0, now we’re in SPAC 2.0. They’ve had some ups, they’ve had some downs, they’ve had some wins, they’ve had some unfortunate situations. Not gonna comment on those. But this time they’ve announced that they are taking, they are merging with a, sorry, not taking, they are merging with Agility Robotics in a $2.5 billion merger, targeting over 620 million in gross proceeds to take Agility Robotics, a humanoid company, public. What is it did Omega uncover with this signal?

Rob Grant: I mean, look, S-S-SPACs are back. That’s, that’s amazing to me. but here we are. I think what Omega is uncovering is that this $2.5 billion SPAC merger with Churchill Capital marks the transition of humanoid robotics from speculative R&D to industrialized data-driven commercial assets. And further, by anchoring its valuation in proprietary operational data and live deployment metrics rather than hardware specifications, Agility is attempting to establish a new investment grammar for the sector, positioning itself as the first pure ploy– pure-play humanoid robotics entity in the public markets. And so, you know, as, as, as I look about what Agility is doing here, I think they, they feel at this moment Despite the fact that they have, you know, what, 30 million or so in actual booked proceeds or current period revenues they are trying to get out ahead and set kind of the terms of what and how moving to public markets should be valued for the humanoid industry. And they feel like this is the right time for them because they have a couple of things going for it. One, they feel like they have a competitive advantage in robotics right now which is their proprietary operational data. They feel that they’ve accumulated this ground truth data from the unpredictable real-world warehouse floors that they’ve operated in with their major partners, including Amazon, GXO Logistics, and Toyota that they’ve established a, a data moat, right? And that they’re building this physical AI foundation model that cannot be replicated by its competitors relying on closed-loop simulations or staged demonstrations. I think they also feel like with their partnerships, that they’ve shown commercial validation. So the robots-as-a-service model, where robots do the dirty, dangerous, and dull jobs, the DDD model, so to speak. This is what their CEO said, “Dirty, dangerous, and dull jobs shifts the buyer conversation from R&D curiosity to measurable ROI.” And so I think it’s very intentional the way that Agility is describing its commercial validation, ’cause they’re focusing on labor shortages and safety. So they’re trying to establish kind of benchmarks that they have and that they meet that are so favorable commercial present operations but future potential as well. And so benchmarks like mean time between failures and commercial uptime And then lastly, I, I do think they are creating a unu-unique investment instrument, you know, so it’s like, like a capital market scarcity timing thing that they’re trying to take advantage of. So Agility is, is allowing, is securing, I should say, this non-dilutive long-term capital necessary to bridge the survival to scale gap while simultaneously setting the valuation benchmark against which all subsequent humanoid robotic ventures will be measured. So I think in short, they see a first-mover advantage here and they feel like because of their data moat and their competitive and commercial validation, that now is the right time, and I think they want to get out, just to be frank, to get out ahead of Figure AI and, and set the terms of how public markets are gonna evaluate humanoids in the future

Grayson Brulte: I might sound old school. You might wanna call me Graham Dodd and say, “Oh, here, here he goes. He’s gonna take a p- a, a piece of paper from Security Analysis.” SPACs are risky. They’re inherently risky. To me, the revenue is not there to justify the valuation and, and we’re gonna get into the risk there in a minute. And then I’m sitting here having deja vu. I said, “Oh, boy. Oh, no, here we go.” This is 2018 to 2021 when the first batch of autonomous vehicle and truck companies went public. And, you know, one of them held on, the other ones went by the wayside. Some were acquired, s- shut down. It didn’t work too well. It just seems that it, it, it’s too early. And I’ll say that, and I’m gonna put on my David Faber CNBC hat here for a minute. CNBC, I’ll wear a hat if you send it, by the way. It is– We’re going into an inflationary environment. We have a, a, a new Fed chair in Kevin Warsh who is not signaling to the market rate hikes, but that’s what the market is predicting. It’s gonna get a lot more expensive, a lot more complicated, and it just seems that the market timing i- is not necessarily right for this. But that’s just my opinion. I’m just some guy and it’s not financial advice. I’m just purely some guy

Rob Grant: I think there’s a lot of truth in kind of the way your brain is working. and, you know, I also think there’s kind of a counter side to that, which is capital is flowing now, right? We’re seeing it flow in the public markets into SpaceX. We’ve got OpenAI and Anthropic. The– I think the concern is you know, will that capital be there post those IPOs, right? If they– Depending on how they do, right? and so I think before physical AI sees a m- its moment pass, right? This is an attempt, ’cause we’re seeing all the virtual AI, as I call it, suck up tremendous amounts of money look to the public markets for additional money. Here’s a company that I think is saying, “I’m maybe a little concerned that if that doesn’t go well, the money for physical AI,” which we think is the next evolution, at least I believe it’s the next evolution beyond virtual AI, maybe even a larger potential market than virtual AI. We should get that money now before folks get perhaps a little nervous or a little buyer’s remorse if things don’t go as well with, with the, the, the following potential IPOs of OpenAI and Anthropic. So I think if the, if the, if the markets are willing to give out money now and, and you think you have a need for it, and you can take it and, and make it to your advantage, as we just discussed with Agility, I, I think it’s a risky bet. But i-if I’m Agility and I’m looking at Tesla Optimus and Figure and, and some of these other big names out there, I’m looking at, you know some of the Chinese companies which are going public, right? We talked about Ubi and Ubitec and others that have just gone public on the Chinese market, or the Hong Kong market at least. I, I think you think maybe, maybe this is a time for a smaller guy to get what he needs before the bigger guys soak up the rest of what may be out there in terms of the appetite of the public markets for AI generally, virtual or physical

Grayson Brulte: Well, it’ll take, I mean, potentially. We, you know, Anthropic has filed confidentially, so that’s still in the works. OpenAI has delayed, but if you look at those, they’re gonna be two, I’m gonna call them money sponges that are gonna absorb, absorb a lot of money. But then I, I go back to an individual and, and I’m a fan of his leadership, so I’ll state that before I tell you who he is, Brian Chesky from Airbnb. They have not had a, a good run to say the least, and I, and I, and I give him Brian a lot of credit. He, he talked openly about X and he goes, “Yeah, we’ve, we’ve underperformed. We basically stunk as a public company.” But he waited until the company was massa- massively profitable, had the, had the cash flow to survive. I’d like to see more companies get to that point. I think, in my personal opinion, Brian and the team and Joe and everybody did that right. So that’s, that’s where I am. That, that’s my school of thought for this. I, I like that model. And you know this, going public is massively complex. There’s a lot of re- re- regulations that go into it. There’s a lot of complexities that go into it, a lot of reporting, and underneath that there’s there’s a lot of costs that go along with that and that, and that can eat into it. So it, it’s something to watch. I mean, I’m just gonna sit here and say we wish them well o- on their SPAC, but there’s, there’s a lot of risk and Omega u- uncovers some of these risks, which we’ll get into here. Risk one here for you, Rob. SEC disclosure force audit and rec- reconciliation of performance and other claims. The market has priced Agility as a first-mover platform, which you’ve rightfully said, awarding a $2.5 billion valuation on 300 million-plus incon- contingent orders and 65,000 operational hours than current period revenues of 30 million or positive unit economics. The core non-consensus risk is that post-merger SEC disclosure requirements will force audited reconciliation of performance claims, including the contested 98% task success rate and backlog cont- contingentality against actual financials, potentially compressing the valuation multiple. The hypothesis is that Agility would fail to exceed 2 billion in, in a. As emp- is refuted, but the durability of the premium remains unproven. That’s a lot of technical financial jargon, but as I said, when you’re public, the rule book has changed

Rob Grant: Oh, yeah. I mean, l- look, the way I would sum that up is you can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk, right? Once you’re public, you gotta walk the walk, right? This is every 90 days you’ve gotta show that you’re how many orders that you’ve gotten, have they gone up? Have you retained the orders year over year? Have you increased your operational hours? Has your performance metrics, even the ones you’ve self-defined, like we just talked about you know, meantime between failures, is that improving? Is that. So even on the terms that you wanna be evaluated on, we’re gonna hold your feet to the fire. No less the terms that the m- market and analysts will want to evaluate you on, right? Which is, you know, is there year-over-year revenue growth? Is there year-over-year partnership growth? Is there. And, and these are just basic metrics. I’m not even talking about, you know, y- the finest minds in computers on Wall Street, which will evaluate you on things much more complicated than what I’m talking about. But even on those basic metrics, you have to show progress, right? I mean, progress or die. and there, there’s a reason that a lot of these companies that went SPAC in, in the autonomous vehicle SPAC mania that you referenced. I mean, some of them, right, have risked being delisted, that their, their price shares went down so low. Some of them have come back from that, but none of them, I would say, are, you know, at the current moment where people thought they would be when they went public, right? that’s not to say they won’t get there, and this is a long game, particularly for some of those that were in the trucking industry right? I think the best, certainly the best days of the autonomous trucking industry are ahead of it, not behind it. but I would say the returns on some of those early trucking SPACs are not what ideally investors would wanna see, and some of that is because of the things that we just talked about. The SEC disclosures and, you know, having to report everything you do publicly and, and set expectations and, you know, meet expectations or fail to meet expectations, they get handled very differently when you’re on the public markets versus when you’ve gotta go into, you know, a fancy hotel with your private board and get your butt chewed out by your, you know, chairman of the board in private, right? That neither feel very good having been on the receiving end of, of both with my various companies I’ve worked at. But I’d much rather do that in private than in public. That’s– I- I’ll put it that way.

Grayson Brulte: Valid point. Once again, y- Mel Brooks must be in the brain today ’cause y- you’re doing great. And let’s not forget, there’s not a lot of liquidity when these companies go with such small valuation, so that’s, that’s another risk. Which brings us into the final risk here. The dirty, dangerous, dull data advantage is not a sustainable competitive moat. Agility’s triple D data advantage is a depreciating asset, not a durable moat, as the industry pivots to foundation model generalization that renders narrow warehouse data sets structurally obsolete. That’s something to watch because you can’t go on X without seeing a company raise a couple hundred million dollars for a world model

Rob Grant: Yeah. And I think that, that is gonna be the real test for Agility, I think. I, I think it’s, it’s really a test for where humanoids and people find the most value in humanoids first, right? There are other companies you know, we, we, we talked about Travis Kalanick in terms of Uber, but his company Atoms, right? They fundamentally believe that this kind of narrow specification use case for humanoids is the way to go. That is, that is where the market is at, and that is where you’re gonna find value in their company providing the services they do. I think Agility is hoping the same thing, whereas you have the more generalists who are saying, “Hey, with these world models, I don’t need to know exactly each small part of the line that you want the robot or humanoid to work on. All I need to know is I can train it to learn anything and that’s what I’m doing, so you can kind of put it anywhere.” Where we are on that spectrum, I think very smart people, including yourself, probably have 100 different opinions and 100 different points on that spectrum between hu- humanoids for use for specific tasks and humanoids for use for general tasks. But this is a big bet to go to the public markets that the humanoids for general tasks is much further off than some are saying

Omega’s Take: Agility’s SPAC as a Forced Transparency Event

Grayson Brulte: Well said, and let’s give Omega’s take here, ’cause Omega summarizes this brilliantly. I tell you, with the brain that we built, every day she’s getting smarter and smarter and smarter. I’m not saying that just to say that. It’s, it’s truly true. Omega’s take here. “Agility Robotics’ SPAC listing is a forced transparency event.” Boy, oh, boy, you and I love the transparency word. Maybe in the office we should get like a plaque that says, “Transparency rules.” And ’cause that’s what we push for. And before I get to the take, I do wanna say to the audience, there was a very large company that is in one of The Road to Autonomy indexes that called and asked us to change the data in the algorithm, and we pushed back and we said, “No. First of all, we can’t do that. It’s cryptology locked, and if you would like that data to potentially make its way in there, you have to disclose it publicly.” Rob and I love public disclosure, so for any individuals thinking about calling us about your company’s listing in the index, make a public statement, SEC filing, X post, company blog. Make the data public, and the index will ingest it because, as I said, we love transparency. You never know, maybe we’ll change the name of the company one day to Transparency Incorporated, ’cause we love transparency. Now back to Omega’s take here. I’m starting over. Got the Mel Brooks thing going here. “Agility Robotics’ SPAC listing is a forced transparency event that will stress-test every unaudited claim simultaneously. The Triple D data moat, the $300 million backlog, and the Amazon relationship, and the structural weakness is that all three are contingent on conditions that the SEC disclosure will either confirm or collapse. The company is valued as a platform at a $2.5 billion valuation but operates as a validated vendor with roughly 100 units deployed, and the gap between those two identities will be resolved in the S-4 filing, not in the market narrative. The sector c- is asymmetric and irreversible. A successful debut lowers the humanoid risk premium for all competitors, while a failed one triggers a, a cascading series of down rounds across private humanoid startups that have borrowed Agility’s commercial framing as their own valuation anger, anchor.” That was a, that was a, that was a mouthful, but I think it sums it up beautifully. What do you think?

Rob Grant: I agree. I agree. And look, it, it, I think it is really that that disclosure, that sunshine if we’re gonna talk in transparency terms, right? There’s nowhere to hide once you become a public company. and that can be a, a really good gift or that can be a very difficult consequence to live with. And then in terms of the structural asymmetry that Omega is pointing out, it, it really goes back to that last point we were just talking about, which is if you feel humanoid robotics’ best use and, and value right now in terms of, of who’s gonna pay you for what is on these sector-specific tasks, right? This is a good sign for you if things go well. if, if the market fails to respond to it because they believe that more generalist humanoids are really where the value will be driven this could be something that you’re very very nervous about because y- you may have been looking at Agility as a competitor. Now you’re like, “You’ve become a competitor and an anchor to me.” Right? I, I have a b- I have a business I’m trying to build in this area and eventually, you know, continue to get funding and continue to get maybe public market backing at some point. But if, if the market doesn’t respond well, this because you’re too early, as you pointed out, or maybe because they don’t believe in the ultimate value of, of smaller task robotics, they believe in general task robotics. And maybe you’re saying, “Hey, we need more time to play that out,” and now you’re forcing this conversation at a time where we don’t think it’s the right time to have it. you’re, you’re very nervous about this reception and what the public markets will think about Agility

Signal Three: Launch of The Road to Autonomy Confidence Indices

Grayson Brulte: And no matter what side you’re on, you’re going to be watching. If you’re thinking about SPACing, if you have a, if you have a private company, or you’re thinking about even starting a humanoid company and raising capital, or you’re raising capital, you’re going to be watching what happens, which brings us to signal number three. We’re always watching, we’re always collecting data, and Rob and I are super proud to announce we have launched The Road to Autonomy Confidence Indices. Rob, what can you tell the audience about our latest data product?

Rob Grant: Well, first of all, I’m very proud. and thank you, Grayson, for all your work on ensuring that we get these things up and running as quickly as we do. you know, your, your day-to-day work is incredible, and I’m so appreciative of it. And you know, thank your lovely wife and, and daughter as well for allowing me to steal so much of your time each day. But yeah, the, the, the, the Confidence Index, so we launched it this week, and it’s a distinct benchmark from what we launched two weeks ago, which were the autonomy indices. So here similar to the autonomy indices, each Confidence Index is a single reading from zero to 100, expressing the weight of current evidence for the global commercial adoption of a sector of the autonomy economy. So the Confidence Index is not ranking operators. That’s the Autonomy Index. But they’re tracking the confidence level of the market in the sector more broadly. So each of the Road to Autonomy Confidence Index aggregates the already sealed sub-indices of the corresponding Road to Autonomy Index into a single composite weighted, recomputed, and cryptographically sealed index which is all done by Omega. So to make that more real, right, we have our Road to Autonomy Robotaxi Index. What the Confidence Index, the Robotaxi Confidence Index measures, is the confidence in the global commercial adoption of robotaxis. And so while the Confidence Index is derived from the underlying Road to Autonomy Index, it is a different measure. It is a measure of the market’s confidence in that sector writ large. Gray, I probably have failed to mention something important there, so fill in any details that I missed

Grayson Brulte: No, you, you did a very, a good job there. What we did, the, the indices for the confidence indices are a sub-indice of the overall indices, and what they’re doing is measuring the broad market’s confidence of the commercialization and success of this technology. So we have the Robotaxi Confidence Index, we have the Autonomous Driving Licensing Confidence Index, we have the Autonomous Trucks Confidence Index, and we have the, the the Delivery Bots Confidence Index. Is what Rob and I are doing with, with The Road to Autonomy Indices is creating a benchmark that individuals can measure the success of this industry. To date, no company in history has ever made a confidence index to track the success of a sector of the autonomy economy. We’re the first ones to ever do that. If you’re an institutional fund, we are licensing the underlying data to that, so please reach out to us if that’s something that you’re interested in. Think of it as you have two, you have two different examples. You have the VIX, you wanna track the volatility, you wanna track the overall market. A lot of indivi- individuals track the S&P 500, some individuals track the, the Dow Jones or the Na- or the NASDAQ. Think of the confidence index as tracking the entire robotaxi sector globally of where this is. You can go look at the data, you can compare the data, and when you look at the data, as Rob says, it is all cryptography sealed. Rob and I have no way to manipulate the data, touch the data, and if you do not believe us, we have open sourced the verification code on GitHub where you can run your own independent verification to look at the underlying data from a cryptology standpoint. And all the cryptology standpoint, it meets the RFC 3161 timestamp international standard. I- is– You will see a divergence in the data, which is really interesting, where, in the conversations that Rob and I have with our institutional clients, some of the largest funds in the world, is there’s an overwhelming questions around robotaxis, what’s happening in the robotaxi market. There are very few questions around autonomous trucking, and Rob and I have noticed in the conversations we’ve had with our institutional clients, we’re starting to get more and more questions around licensing based on all the public announcements. And so what you are seeing in the confidence indices, you are starting to see the autonomous driving licensing confidence index increase to match the market. W- No surprise to, or rise to robotaxi is there. And trucks, as we’ve heard, know from our institutional clients, the market’s still unsure. So it is the barometer for individuals to use. And if you’d like to put it on your website, we have built embed code, so feel free to embed it. If you’re an analyst and wanna put it in a report, we, we give you the legal right to do that. We just ask that you credit it to The Road to Autonomy Indices and, and link back. And if you’re an institution, we have the underlying licensing data there. And I’ll say it bluntly, not egotistically, we built the benchmark, use the benchmark

Rob Grant: Amen. Amen. Right? And look, this, this really is, it’s the, it’s a, it’s a way to cut through the information asymmetry, which is a fancy way to say the BS between self-reported technical milestones and actual commercial execution and what the markets are viewing in terms of the confidence of robotaxis as a potential future sector or autonomous trucking as a potential future sector, right? And when they are seeing that as maturing and when they are seeing that they have confidence in it and, and, and by confidence, it, it it means, you know, capital allocation. It means, you know, reevaluation of public equities in terms of maybe some of the parent companies that are a way to get into some of the companies, right? Or maybe it’s part of the public equities of companies that are already public or if you’re a venture capitalist looking at, you know, a Series F in a, in a private company, right? Is this the time the market is valuing those types of companies in the industry writ large? So I think it has tremendous value to so many people both institutional but also if you’re a private company. If, if, if you’re a company yourself and you wanna know, you know, what is kind of the feeling, more than the feeling, what is the data behind market reaction, market decisions in, in your sector? I think this could be very valuable as well

Grayson Brulte: You think, I know it could be very valuable ’cause you and I use it as an, as an internal tool. And we ha- we’re fortunate that we’ve built Omega, our introduced frontier model, and it’s looking at everything. It’s looking at regulatory, it, it’s, it’s looking at financing, and everything is publicly available data. So I wanna stress that. Every-everything that are, that are in these indices is publicly available data. That’s what we’re building, that’s what we’re doing. And because we own Omega, we asked Omega for Omega’s take on what Omega thought of the industry. And I’ll read this to you. It’s a little biased, but I still think it’s great here. Omega’s take: The autonomy economy has exited its infancy phase of selling potential and entered a ru- a ruthless phase of delivering. The Road to Autonomy Confidence Indices act as the sector’s first true macro environment scoreboard, establishing a standard that will dictate the cost of capital. Companies that fail to correlate with the upward index movements will face severe market penalties as the era of pitching gives way to the era of being measured. I like that, and you know what that says to me, what we said earlier? Transparency rules. That’s what that says to me

Rob Grant: 100%. Give us tangible metrics. Tangible metrics, right? Disclose them

Grayson Brulte: To disclose the metrics because Omega will pick them up, and each and every Thursday, Rob and I will be here breaking down the signals. And if you’re interested in our institutional offerings, please send an email to [email protected]. That’s [email protected]. Rob and I are here for you to help you navigate the autonomy economy, to understand our data offerings, or pretty much anything that you need to do with autonomy, reach out to us. And to KPMG, thank you for being a wonderful sponsor in making this show possible. The future is bright. The future is autonomous. The future is, drum roll please, transparency. Rob, another great show this week

Rob Grant: 100%. Like I said, happy birthday America and let’s go US Men’s National Team

Grayson Brulte: Happy birthday. Enjoy the barbecue. E- enjoy the fireworks. And to America, thank you for 250 years of freedom, and go men’s soccer

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