Executive Summary

Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant unveil The Road to Autonomy Indices, a cryptographically locked, series of Indices covering Robotaxis, Autonomous Driving Licensing, Autonomous Trucks, and Delivery Bots powered by OMEGA, AUTNMY AI‘s proprietary OMEGA algorithm.

The indices score companies from zero to 100 based strictly on public, licensed, or proprietary data, updating every 12 hours with a published RFC 3161 timestamp to ensure full transparency. In the same episode, the hosts analyze Mobileye’s June 16, 2026 announcement to pivot from a capital-light tier one technology licensor to a direct-to-consumer robotaxi operator targeting a 2027 US city launch. OMEGA flagged the announcement as structurally premature, citing no named city, no disclosed permits, no facility lease, and no standalone SEC filing trail as of June 2026.

Key Autonomy Signals Episode Questions Answered

Autonomy Signals Topics & Timestamps

[00:00] Signal 1: The Road to Autonomy Indices Launch

Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant launch The Road to Autonomy Indices, scoring 38 companies on commercialization across robotaxi, autonomous driving licensing, autonomous trucks, and delivery bots. Built with OMEGA on public and licensed data only and cryptographically sealed to the RFC 3161 standard, the benchmark is designed to cut through the hype and function as a transparent market barometer.

[23:44] Signal 2: Mobileye Pivots from Licensor to Robotaxi Operator

Mobileye announced plans to launch a direct-to-consumer robotaxi service in a major US city in 2027, scaling from roughly 100 vehicles to approximately 17,000 over five years. With no named city, no disclosed permits, and no SEC filing trail, the real question is whether Mobileye’s investors have the cash and the conviction to stand toe-to-toe with Waymo and Tesla.

[56:42] 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 Episode Transcript

Introducing The Road to Autonomy Indices

Grayson Brulte: Rob, it’s a special day here at The Road to Autonomy. You and I collectively, along with our friend OMEGA, don’t worry, she’s not real, she’s an AI algorithm, we launched the Road to Autonomy indices covering robotaxis, autonomous driving licensing, autonomous trucks, and delivery bots. We’re gonna get into that ’cause that’s a very important signal ’cause what do we do? We put everything through OMEGA to get OMEGA’s opinion. And then Mobileye, lo and behold, they say, “Licensing’s cool. Nope. Now guess what? We wanna be the operator.” They’re getting into the robotaxi business. And a huge thank you to KPMG for being a wonderful sponsor for Autonomy Signals. I’m always rocking the hat, and if you used to watch golf, you know who wore this hat. Rob, let’s get into the big news. We did it. We perfected it. We launched it. And Joanne Mueller at Axios, thanks for covering it. What a day. What a day

Rob Grant: It’s really great. I’m so glad to be able to share this with everybody. The the indices are– I- I- It’s a, it’s a project you and I talked about early on about how do we cut through the hype, the PR, the, the vision decks, the letters of intent that, that say we’re gonna build a billion vehicles 10 years from now, and really measure how this commercialization progress is between the companies involved in the space, right? We all wanna know who’s real, who’s growing, who’s advancing and, and, and what does that mean for the adoption of this technology that you and I firmly believe is going to be transformational for not only the mobility sector, but so many other sectors, right? Whether it’s agricultural commercial airlines the way that defense is working, national security, to what’s in your home, to what’s in your factories and, and how that’s being built and delivered and sorted and all sorts of things. Like we, like we say, from armies to agriculture, from home to healthcare and from military to mobility. here’s our, here’s our chance with the, the platform that we built to, to demonstrate what we think we know along with OMEGA about where people stand on the road to commercialization.

Why Commercialization and Driverless Clarity Are the Core Metrics

Grayson Brulte: I like that. You take our tagline, the road to autonomy, to the road to commercialization. And you’re right. When we were thinking about this idea, and you know I’ve harped on this here and on Autonomy Markets and in our newsletter, a press release is, is, is full of bold wor- words with no real terms. And we wanted to build an algorithm focused on commercialization. Who is going to build a business and commercialize it? Who is going to generate revenue? And then one of the biggest aspects of the algorithm and the weights, driver-out commercialization. Oh, driverless means this, driverless means that. Let’s just clarify for the record, driverless is not when there’s a human supervising it. That’s called supervised. When you remove the human from the vehicle, then it’s driverless, and that’s what we wanted to really do. And we based the weights, as you know, from, from zero to 100. 100 in, in my opinion, I’ll say very humbly, that you’re operating a, a, a really great business, and zero, y- you’re just getting started. So we really covered the map there. And for the audience, we went global. We looked at the entire autonomy economy from the robotaxis to autonomous trucks, to de- delivery bots, to licensing, which is a very big industry. We didn’t just focus on the United States. We went global. Rob, as OMEGA built this, what were some of the most interesting things that OMEGA uncovered that you learned?

Key Findings: China’s Cross-Category Leadership and Global Reach

Rob Grant: First of all, let’s, let’s take a step back just for those who, who may not have seen the index yet, or the various indexes yet. You can go to indices.roadtoautonomy.com and you can take a view at the four benchmark areas that, that, that we have put out there. There’s a total of 38 companies, and what we’re trying to measure is the relative commercialization, deployment, and operational maturity of these operators across these four different categories. And so those categories, again, are robotaxi, autonomous driving, licensing, autonomous trucks, and delivery bots. And so I think for me, what really stood out when you take a look at the four categories and the 38 different companies that we have ranked there, and we’ll be adding more categories in the future, but this is where we started. I think what stands out is kind of the global cross-category leadership of China in, in so many of these categories, right? That’s really what stood out to me. If you look at the robotaxi index, we have Waymo as the leader in that index. and then you wind up seeing three Chinese companies very closely behind Waymo in, in, in Baidu, in WeRide, and in Pony. then you move over to the licensing index, and there are a few Chinese companies that are present in the licensing index as well. you have Momenta who are following there and you have DeepRoute AI. And then again, when you go into the delivery bot category, you see Neolix right up there and Meituan up there as well. And so, you know, this global leadership presence of China is what, is one of the first things that stood out to me, amongst others. but what, what was the f- initial thing that stood out to you, Grayson?

Grayson Brulte: To me was that autonomy is not just the United States and China, it’s global. You, you have Israel, you have, have Saudi Arabia, you have companies in Malaysia. Is that. And you have Croatia, we can’t forget about Verna and Croatia, is that it’s becoming global, and then it’s really truly starting to scale. And one of the, I guess, I don’t wanna call it eye-opening things, was really getting a true understanding of who’s driver-out and who’s not. That was really eye-opening to me. Who’s where in terms of, of, of development, and who’s scaling. There was, there was a lot there, and then w- I think one of the coolest things that we built was we built the Uber, Lyft, Grab guide, which was kinda neat. So you can see, okay, exclusive market, market exclusive, partner exclusive. That was kinda neat. So a lot of really interesting things are just saying that this industry, despite all of the hype coming again, it’s still in its infancy to where it’s truly going

Rob Grant: I think that’s a really astute observation in terms of what, at an initial glance, you can pull from the, the, the four categories that we’ve put out there. I think, and it makes intuitive sense to me that you see robotaxis as sort of the most or furthest along the road to commercialization, right? You, you’ve got some very big operators in terms of Waymo, Waymo and Baidu who are operating in over 10 plus cities each with driver-out. that’s not to say that they’re anywhere near where I expect them to be five years from now, but comparatively so, compared to other categories like autonomous trucking, robotaxis, I think, are further along on their path to commercialization. And then you can see that the licensing aspect and, and who’s licensing L4 technology is not quite as robust as the robotaxi category, and that’s because you still have those pure play operators in the robotaxi space. And by pure play, I mean those like Waymo, who own the stack as well as own the consumer aspect of the relationship as well and they’re partnering with manufacturers. And so as well as Tesla, who owns even the manufacturing. But they, they are, you know, building their own proprietary stack, and so is Zoox. And so I think the three US leaders all fall outside of the licensing category. But I expect them one day to move into that category. I do expect at some point Waymo to license their technology and perhaps Tesla license their technology as well. And so that’ll be really interesting to see how folks start to cross-compete amongst these categories. And later today, we’ll talk about one who’s going the other way, who’s a licensor in Mobileye, who’s looking to become an operator of robotaxis. And so I think that cross-pollination will be interesting to, to see over time. But you can really see that those furthest along on the road to commercialization in the robotaxi category are those that are, are more vertically integrated than, than going outside for their licensed technology.

Grayson Brulte: Before we get into how the indices work, gotta read a statement here. Inclusion in the Road to Autonomy Indices carries no endorsement or criticism of any operator. Now, let’s move on to the indices and how do, how do they work, Rob? What insights can we share with the audience?

How OMEGA Works: Data Rules, Cryptographic Locks, and Transparency

Rob Grant: Yeah. So I mean, first of all, the, the indices are designed developed with weight and a scoring system with the help of OMEGA. As, as folks know OMEGA is the proprietary AI algorithm that Grayson and I have built. and OMEGA, it does not scrape the internet for any information, all of the– or crawl proprietary domains. It uses either public data, licensed data, or proprietary data that Grayson and I have developed. OMEGA uses no material non-public information of any kind. it doesn’t use internal or confidential communications and this is kind of a hard programmatic constraint. And we as operators of Autonomy AI and, and, and creators of OMEGA, have no ability to alter the scores and the takes that OMEGA provides on each index. So if you’re on somebody’s PR team or you have information that, that, that, that you wanna feed us that you think will help change the score, doesn’t matter. It– If it’s not public, if you want it to be out there and influence kind of the, the, the leaderboard, disclose it, put it on your public website, put it on your X account, put it in a regulatory filing, and we will find it, OMEGA will find it, and that will go into there. But if you wanna call us and give us, you know, a heads-up, great, we’ll keep that secret, but it doesn’t go into our OMEGA index index of any sort. and so, you know, really the, the, the hope here is, is, I think, as we mentioned, to function in a way that cuts through this hype obscuring the commercial reality here. And so by relying on this original field research and verified public data rather than roadmap slides or, you know, private conversations with, with folks in the industry, the indices are able to provide a very structured, very publicly verifiable standard on which to measure operational developments for commercialization operations and maturity of commercial services for each company. And so look, you’re a little bit more of the technical guy than me at some times, so I’ll give you a chance to describe to folks how the, how the scoring system works for the indexes that we’ve built.

Grayson Brulte: Sure. So the scoring system is, is zero to 100 in various different categories, from, from manufacturing to commercial, opportunity to revenue. And I wanna highlight a, a very important aspect, the algorithm and the way to cryptology locked. And every time, every 12 hours, every time an update is pushed, we publish a public timestamp to the RFC 3161 standard cryptology, and we open source the verification layer, so any individual can go verify the seal that this was not modified. Rob and I have no ability, as he said, to go in there and modify. So if you wanna call us, you’re gonna hear this. And a very big company called me today to correct data, and I said, “Please make an X post or put out a blog post.” “But we need to tell you.” “No, please make an X post or make a blog post.” So if you call me, I will say, “Please make a public statement,” or Rob said, “Make a regulatory filing.” The data has to be public. And Parsha, what we’re doing with this indices is to push for transparency. If you’re going to say that you’re operating in 100 cities with no driver, release the data. That’s o- one of the things there. So it’s on a zero to 100 score, and it’s t- it’s to measure and to bring some level of transparency for how individuals can really measure how these companies are succeeding, ’cause right now, as I said earlier, we’re in a headline world. And so we built a tool that is fully transparent that you can go look at the data to see what we’re doing here.

Rob Grant: Yeah, I think that’s really The, the, the true point here is that we’re hoping that folks understand what this is and isn’t, right? This is you know, this is not me projecting where I think somebody will be in five years. This is not Grayson doing that. This is our proprietary algorithm given strict rules about what information it can use and how to develop the weights and the scoring system and applying it and letting it go. And that’s a measure of where things stand today. It is not an endorsement of where things will be six weeks from now, eight weeks from now. it is not saying we prefer this company or we have a better relationship with this company than another. All that is irrelevant to what we’ve put out today. And I think, you know, what I really love too is you can go in and you see the leaderboard on the benchmark board when you first go to the website. But then when you click on any company, it’ll give you the kinda subcategories a definition of them, and what the score is for each company on that. And then it will give you a composite history. It will look at it over time. Has it moved up? Has it moved down? What’s the seven-day average? And then what’s great is OMEGA also synthesizes a quick one or two paragraph take on the company. and you can see that, you know, this stuff is updating every 12 hours because it has the latest and greatest news in there. And so I’m looking at, you know, Wayve, for instance which had some news today. And that news, if you go into the autonomy index, you’ll see that news today about its partnership with Stellantis and Uber reflected in OMEGA’s take there, which is fantastic. so I think this is a great way for people to really understand, in the moment, how is commercialization happening in these four categories? Where is it happening, and how far along that maturity curve is it? again, we hope to add more categories to this. If you have categories that you hope to see us move the, these benchmarks and indices to, please let us know. I think we have some ideas of where we wanna take this. but I really think people will find a lot of really useful information about not only where the categories are and where they stand, about how it stands in terms of its global positioning around the world, who’s participating in these different categories, but also a ton of great information about what is the most recent news around each company covered in each category. And so I think it’s going to be super helpful for folks to, to sift through all that noise to see the signal, right? It’s all about autonomy signals, and I think this is going to be a really great, useful tool for people to get that signal each and every day to see what’s changed in the last 12 hours. And then if you have any further need or questions or insights that you want, and we can go much deeper than what’s on the index, reach out to us. Grayson and I are here, and we can provide much deeper insights, whether it’s to the whole category, whether it’s to a specific company in the category, whether it’s about a, a completely different category or about a company that may not even be on here, and you’re saying, “Well, why isn’t this company on here? What can you tell me about that?” And so I think the index is gonna be a really useful tool for so many folks, and, and we’re here to augment it at any time anybody wants to talk further about it.

OMEGA’s Self-Assessment: A Market Barometer, Not a Capital Catalyst

Grayson Brulte: Reach out to us. We can go beyond the signal. And staying on the, the transparency lane here, in OMEGA’s take, OMEGA tells you why the ranking changed, why the weight changed. It’s all there public summarized every 12 hours. Because some individuals and some algorithms only look at a headline. We’ve programmed OMEGA to go beyond the headline to truly understand what is going on. So as Rob said, reach out. We’re happy to have conversations with any individual interested in learning more about OMEGA, the proprietary indices we built, because we’re building this to be a benchmark, and that’s what we’re doing, and a transparent benchmark. And just like you have on the website, we got an OMEGA’s take ’cause yes, we even took the industry and put it into OMEGA to ask for an opinion, and OMEGA’s got a great take on this, Rob the index is, the index’s single value is informational, not catalystic. The autonomy economy’s actual drivers, operational milestones, regulatory permit cycles. Can’t forget about those permits. Employer brand and fundamental growth metrics operate independently of any proprietary ranking system. OMEGA’s indices map the terrain. They do not move it, thus the indices function as a market barometer, not a capital catalyst. That is the key thing there, a market barometer. We’re merely just trying to give the market a general sense of, of where this is. A really good take. she wrote it, so it’s good

Rob Grant: Yeah. And, and, and, and OMEGA is very self-reflective. It knows what it is and what it isn’t, right? And I think again, I, I hope the audience really goes to the website, check it out, look through the information in any category, click in, follow the trends. we’ll be posting, you know, on our X account kind of updates every week about kind of the big movers within the week for the benchmark and the various categories and indexes. And so I think it’s gonna be a super valuable tool for so many, whether you’re you know, invested in the autonomy economy, whether you’re just interested in the autonomy economy, whether you’re a participant in the autonomy economy I think there’s a lot of value here for everybody

Grayson Brulte: There’s a lot of value here. We even set up a dedicated account on X, Autonomy Indices. That’s @AutonomyIndices. Follow it every Friday at PM Eastern. A weekly update’s published on, on what moved in the indices. And furthermore, if there is a big spike to the e- either to the upside or the downside, that’s there as well. So follow that, and then on the Road to Autonomy account, we’ll retweet it. And I wanna read the second take, OMEGA. This was a reflective, the take here, Rob. This is really important here. “The true lever in this index design is the field intelligence layer. While normalizing public data to a base of 100 provides a standardized benchmark, the real edge lies in tracking below-the-line operational knowledge. A quiet wi- wind down or asset redeployment is often the truest signal of where a balance sheet is actually betting. By capturing the total value creation of the autonomy stack, including fleet management software, physical infrastructure, and sensor integration, the indices redirect institutional capital towards companies demonstrating scalable operational capabilities, moving the sector definitely beyond subjective assessments.” That’s important. It’s, this is not subjective in our opinion. This is not Rob’s opinion. This is not Grayson’s opinion. This is all purely based on data

Rob Grant: Yes. And, and I think that’s what separates it from so many of the things that, that we’ve seen out there that try to guess, so to speak, or give their opinion about who’s in the lead, who’s winning, who will win. look, I think we participate in that. I think we each have our own opinions as to who is winning, who will win, who are gonna be the ultimate competitors in, in each of these categories. But what I love about the benchmarks here and the indices here is that it’s all data-driven. It is not full of our opinion. It is taken from billions of public data points globally weighted accordingly, and then put out as neutrally as possible and as transparently as possible. As you mentioned, you can go see when each 12 hours, each part of the chain, that we’re not interrupting it, that it’s just OMEGA putting it together and that we’re really as much watchers of it as you are even though we, we kind of caretake it a little bit in terms of ensuring that we pay our tokens every month so OMEGA can run. But otherwise, we have as little control over it as, as our audience, and who controls it are the participants in each category and what they are willing to disclose, and we hope that they disclose more going forward

Mobileye’s Strategic Pivot: From Licensor to Robotaxi Operator

Grayson Brulte: Yeah. Please, to the autonomy companies, please disclose as m- much metrics and much data as you can. It only helps inform the community, and also it helps the algorithm. And, and, and Robbie said something funny. You and I will sit there and we’ll have coffee, “Hey, did you see that move in this industry? Did you see that move in that industry?” And then lo and behold, there’s a press release here or an X post there. So Rob and I have fun. We talk about it every morning. It’s how we, how we start our day here at Autonomy AI, so it’s a lot of fun. Hope it becomes part of your daily habit. And as Rob said earlier, if you wanna learn more or go deeper, please reach out to us. Let’s go to signal two. I thought I was, I was like, “I am I tired today? Am I, am I reading this right? Did I have enough coffee?” Mobileye is going from licensing, and Mobileye is a component in the licensing index, and they are moving into the robotaxi operator business. I’m sorry, again, I’m gonna harp on this, press release, light on details. What do we know about this signal?

Rob Grant: Yeah. So yesterday, June 16th, Mobileye announced plans to launch a direct-to-consumer robotaxi service in a major US city in 2027, stating that they will start with an initial fleet of approximately 100 vehicle. the press release, the company targets an aggressive scale-up to approximately 17,000 vehicles over the next five years following initial launch. The service will integrate the Mobileye Drive autonomous system with its MOOVEIT subsidiary’s mobility platform to handle rider booking, multimodal trip planning, and fleet management. the last thing to know right now, Mobileye is operating about 100 ID.buzzes autonomous vehicles across six cities, but only to validate its driver tech- driverless technology. So big news here, going from a licensor and somebody whose lic- AV Level 4 technology stack is being built into other operators’ and manufacturers’ technology into becoming an operator of a robotaxi. So it’ll be really interesting as Mobileye goes from supplier to operator, but also supplier to competitor.

Grayson Brulte: It will be. It, there’s a lot of questions, but the good news is m- Mobileye’s publicly traded, so hopefully we get some m- more data there. Th- they supply L2 systems, they supply L4 systems, and I looked at this and said, “Okay, so Moya America, the V- the VW subsidiary, has a deal with Uber. Well, the brain, let’s call it the brain, is Mobileye. Well then, if Mobileye’s going to launch a robotaxi service into, let’s just say the LA market, ’cause that’s where Moya’s publicly said they’re going, and then Mobileye’s. They’re gonna be competing with their own stack. It seems to me that. Does the licensing business get spun out? Does it, does it get shut down? W- there’s a lot of things in this that really matter. why, why now? I mean, that’s the big question, Rob. Why, why do you think Mobileye said, “Why now?”

Rob Grant: Yeah. To me, I think that question is answered in a sense by what I think they fear they’re missing out on. I think, I think the, the strategic aspect of this is that I believe Mobileye has come to the conclusion that providing component-level hardware and software integration is no longer within the company viewed as sufficient to capture the estimated market opportunity here. I think that, you know, what they’re seeing is that becoming a tier one supplier, so to speak, to Level 4 technology is gonna leave them outside of a tremendous market opportunity. And so they’re reading the competitive dynamics in this space as saying, “Hey, the– if you really want to maximize your potential in developing your L4 stack, you have to also participate in the platform layer and the consumer relationship layer.” And so, you know, Mobileye is now going out to position itself to compete directly against Waymo as well as Tesla and other planned networks. And so I think they’re saying, “You know what? Vertical integration, as we’ve talked about, is now back in vogue. Instead of just being one piece of the puzzle, let’s own more pieces of this puzzle.” And we’ve, we’ve s- we’ve seen this with other companies, right? We’ve talked about it with Xpeng and what they’re trying to do, going from manufacturer to, to operator as well. and so it’s really fascinating that Mobileye, I think, has seen the light that perhaps they’re too s- they’re too niche in this area, that if they really do have a L4 stack that is reliable and capable, that rather than just licensing it out to others, they should take advantage of it and see larger margins by operating that L4 technology in a robotaxi business

The Real Costs of Operating a Robotaxi Business

Grayson Brulte: To me, it’s the FOMO, fear of missing out, because when you have general conversations around robotaxis, 9 out of 10 times, all due respect, the Mobileye name never comes up. It’s, it’s Waymo, Tesla, Waymo, Tesla. That’s how all the conversations go. And then obviously, you, you have your other players. So to me, it’s the, it’s the fear of missing out. But you and I have done a lot of work on this for clients, looking at BOM cost, looking at the cost of operating a depot, getting the energy, getting the permits hiring the lobbies, you get it. You and I have modeled this for clients, and I’ll just tease to the audience here, without giving away proprietary data it’s not cheap. It’s it’s rather expensive. And, and we can sit here, and Rob and I have spreadsheets and formulas that we can show you, that sometimes that below the line’s actually more expensive to operate and to build than building the technology itself. Because in the press release, there was no named city. OMEGA could not uncover any robotaxi permit filings, no facility disclosures, no ride-hailing partnerships. Yes, we know that a while ago, announcement with Lyft, but there was no Uber here. It goes back to the qu- to the, to the question, yes, they, they, they wanna move in this, yes, they wanna vertically integrate. It goes back to why we built ECU. Th- where’s the details? All these pieces that you need to operate, and especially then you’re gonna need an OEM partner, you’re gonna need a lot of pieces, and we say that with Wayve ramping up. And it’s the question of, I started this, this segment with FOMO fear of missing out. Is it fear of being behind?

Rob Grant: Yeah. I, I think it, it, it could very well be that there’s a sense that in order to not only advance the product that they want to sell or have been associated with selling, which is either, you know an L2+ system or an L4 system, that they need more direct kind of control over the learnings the, the, the operations how you integrate, things of that nature that they, they, that they’re missing key ingredients in order to advance their own stack. And so it, it may be that, you know, saying they’re gonna o- operate a robotaxi business is just a way to, to, to explain in a more compelling narrative that they need additional information in order to make their current product either better, iterate faster, or make it more friendly for, you know potential consumers or, or purchasers, not consumers, but potential purchasers of that technology to wanna use. And so, you know, it, it– I find it fascinating, especially given, you know, where they’ve succeeded on the L2+ side, and maybe that’s something that they’re learning from. I mean, they dominate the Eu- in, in, in L2+ technology, particularly with the European manufacturers. and, and maybe some of this is a fear that the European manufacturers are not so engaged in the conversation around L4. And if that’s our kind of robust source of business for L2+, but we can’t rely on that for L4 that we’re developing, how do we show others outside of Europe that rather than going with an NVIDIA system or a Wayve system or an Autobrains who is, you know, down the road in, in Israel, they’re developing a, a, an L4 stack as well. How do they show that, you know, Mobileye is as much of a leader in L4 technology as it is in L2 without, you know, without the, the, the kinda safety net of knowing that the the German and then the European OEMs are, are gonna be large consumers of this technology right now?

Grayson Brulte: That’s a very valid point, and this is all, again, this is hypothetical and this is an assumption. Perhaps there was some internal modeling that was done, and they saw over time that the L2, L2+ business would shrink as more competitors enter the space. And they saw, okay, we have the one deal with Moya, that’s, that’s public, and they saw all these other deals getting done, and perhaps they saw the, the, the market sh- shrinking and they had to, to make a move. And I say that because, don’t forget, they, they acquired Aman’s hu- humanoid. So maybe perhaps that they’re, they’re seeing that their traditional business is going to decline and shrink, and then they’re, they’re moving into this. Because I’m just saying this as a person who has a lot of friends. I do not know one single person, and I know a lot of people, that has ever been in a driver-out, fully driverless Mobileye vehicle anywhere in the world. So perhaps they’re, they’re trying to say that we’re coming to catch up. I, I don’t know. I, I have a lot more questions, and would love to have Mobileye address them with us in a public forum of, of where they’re r- really, truly, what is the strategy behind this?

Rob Grant: Agreed. I, I have a ton of questions, you know, particularly because we’ve seen some of its L4 licensing competitors kind of look to partner on L2+ technology as well, right? And you know, so we, we know that, that Wayve is engaged in those discussions. We also know that there’s a huge Chinese competitive aspect to L2+ technology, right? We talked about it a few weeks ago on Signals. BYD is, is selling an advanced L2+ system in a $13,000 car. and so, you know, it, it could be that they’re feeling the squeeze or, or fear a potential squeeze on their L2+. And then when you combine it with the fact that you know, their consumer base for L2+ isn’t really known to be on the forefront of L4 or really engaged in a-adopting L4 technology at the pace that some of the other major manufacturers are. They’re trying to figure out a way to draw attention to the fact to others, ” Hey, w-we’re, we’re here. We’re actually doing L4 as well. We’re, we’re doing it,” you know, I would say if, if from their perspective, they’ll say they’re doing it really well. But to your point, right, whenever we talk about L4 licenses and we talk about who’s powering L4 technology you know, Mobileye is, is not the first name that comes up in those conversations for sure.

Grayson Brulte: I have a hat. It’s a pretty famous hat with a lot of folks. It’s called an inspector hat, and I’m glad to put the inspector hat on and come over to Israel with Rob and inspect the technology under one condition: no human safety operator. We’ll go, we’ll inspect it, we’ll do a field report. Let’s go on to the risks, ’cause OMEGA uncovered two, I’ll call it very pointed risks. Let’s start with the first one here. R- robotaxi operator capital requirements divert resources from OEM product roadmap, creating execution risks across both business lines. That’s something that we’re starting to see, ’cause the, the capital’s going into humanoids. It just, it, the, the, the clear focus discipline is, appears not to be there at the moment, so good risk call.

Rob Grant: Well, 100%. As, a- and as you mentioned, right, even operating a, a small robotaxi operations in, say, you know, Los Angeles for example, and it’s 100 vehicles, it’s still a capital-intensive process if y- if you are the one that’s gonna be footing the bill for the depot, for the charging, for the maintenance you know, for the insurance, all of that which are not traditionally what Mobileye has carried on their balance sheet. And so you have that capital requirement. You have a a growing price squeeze from, like we just mentioned, the L2+ providers that are competing with you now and advancing at much cheaper costs a similar type of technology. and then you have a, a series of end-to-end camera-only competition within your L4 technology, right? Your Ways, your XPengs, other companies that we’ve talked about. And so you’ve gotta compete and know where your resources, which even for a company like Mobileye, get limited at some point, right? Even, even really big balance sheet companies have to be careful about where they’re putting their capital resources. And, you know, look, I worked at Cruise for many years. I worked at Lyft for many years. I worked at Aurora. any full-throated effort into developing L4 technology in a consumer-facing robotaxi operations is a huge financial lift. you know, we’re, we’re, we’re talking hundreds of millions at a minimum to billions of dollars or more multiple billions of dollars, depending on how far you want to go into being an operator. And so, you know, this is not a, a proposition to be gone into lightly. It has real consequences for balance sheet, for prioritization within a company and for execution within a company that now is, you know, kind of taken its, its focus and added additional you know, bandwidth or, or additional scope to its focus. And, and sometimes that can work really well, and sometimes that can be quite disastrous

Grayson Brulte: You have the experience and you know firsthand, even just, let’s put this in simple terms. Signing a lease for a 50,000, 100,000 square foot warehouse is not cheap. That’s before you even get to the, the permitting and the electrical infrastructure, so you’re, you’re right there. This Is the pointed one

Rob Grant: One thing I’d say on that is just, just so you know, is I would always tell my teams, you know, as we had multiple priorities for the company to unlock, right? Whether it was a municipal thing that was standing in the way of building a depot, whether it was getting a permit at a state level, whether it was fighting for you know, dealing with contractual or other issues in when you’re negotiating with foreign entities that happen to also be foreign governments and so on and so forth, all sorts of things that can distract you. You know, the, the big thing that I would always say is keep the main thing the main thing, right? if you lose sight of that North Pole, it can be disastrous for everything that you see as a priority, but you have to know what your main thing is, right? And I, you know, here that’s my concern, is my– with, with Mobileye, what is your main thing? Is it L2 plus? Is it L4? Is it licensing? Is it operations? it is very hard for me to understand from the outside, right? And we’re not talk- we haven’t talked to anyone from Mobileye. What is Mobileye’s main thing? What is it, right? and I think whenever you lose sight of keeping the main thing the main thing, it, it, it, it, it leads to kind of paralysis or, or certainly adds a huge element of, of execution risk to it

OMEGA Flags Mobileye Launch as Structurally Premature

Grayson Brulte: I’m gonna channel Marshall Matters. Will the real thing please stand up? Please stand up. There you go. So I’ll give you a little Eminem shout out, a little of pop culture. Rob says, “Keep the main thing the main thing.” That, that’s right, because here’s the pointed one from, from OMEGA. This is a risk. Mobilized 2027 robotaxi launch is structurally premature. No name city, no disclosed permits, no fac- facility lease, and no standalone SEC filing trail as of June 2026 That sums it up very, very early. And in the indices, if you notice, there wasn’t a big move because the indices in OMEGA went beyond the headline to look at the SEC filings

Rob Grant: Absolutely right as it should. And, you know, this reminds me of you know, other companies that, that I’ve had discussions with and, you know, they’ve brought me in for a potential role or something like that, and you sit there and they– You know, sometimes you’re invited and you get to listen into all hands. And you’re seeing, you know, a leader stand up, and they’ll just describe something that they wanna do at an all hands which is not atypical, but it kinda comes out of the blue, and you kinda don’t know where it’s gonna go. You, you, you kinda have no real direction with it. You’re like, “Okay, that’s interesting, but, but what am I who works in this department or that department, what am I supposed to do with that?” That’s kinda what this feels like, which is like, “Okay, leadership, you’ve told us we’re gonna go do something, but what are we actually gonna do? Like, what, what is this change in my day-to-day? How am I supposed to understand where this stands in relative priority to the things that I’ve been here doing for 20 years or whatever?” So it just, it just feels like maybe the details will be filled in, maybe this all works out really well. but that’s– tho-those are maybes spelled with all capital letters for sure.

Cash and Conviction: Can Mobileye Fund a Multi-Billion Dollar Pivot?

Grayson Brulte: I like that. Well, I’m gonna take it one step further and use the voltage term and plus it. Bold capital letters, okay? Bold capital letters. That’s, that’s where I’m going with that. And let, let, let’s go on to OMEGA’s take. OMEGA’s got a, a great take here. “Mobileye’s June 16, 2026 announcement marks a fundamental strategic pivot from a capital-light tier one technology supplier,” which is very important, “to a vertically integrated robotaxi operator, signaling that capturing the full autonomous value chain is now required to compete with end-to-end incumbents such as Waymo and Tesla. The key is cash.” Does. Buzz, this is me. Does Mobileye have enough cash to do it, and will investors give them enough runway to do it? As you look at the numbers that Waymo has raised, it takes billions upon billions upon billions of dollars to do this. And if you add it all up, based on public disclosures, it’s been estimated that Alphabet and their part- and their partners, investment partners, have put in over 30 billion to get Waymo where it is. You look at Tesla, billions as well. Are Mobileye’s investors willing to let them put billions of dollars on the line? That is the question

Rob Grant: Absolutely. I think you have your C in cash, I have my C in conviction. Do Mobileye investors have the conviction to see this plan through? Given all that we’ve talked about, it is going to take a high degree of conviction if your plan is to stand toe-to-toe with the Waymos, the Teslas, the Zoox’s, the Baidus of the world a- and others, right? It is a it is going to take a great deal of conviction, and it will take conviction not only in terms of the cash you put up, but also in terms of the ups and downs that come with running a consumer-facing robotaxi operation. What happens the first time you have an incident? What happens if, you know that incident causes you to have to pause operations? What happens if that incident causes you severe brand reputational damage, right? These are things that Mobileye has not necessarily felt the full brunt of being a licenser, but will face the full brunt of being an operator

Grayson Brulte: Well said, because when you’re an operator, your customer has changed. Your customer is the consumer, and the consumer has a phone that is a giant microphone, and you’re under the scrutiny, we’re gonna say you’re, you’re under the spotlight. Any little incident could turn into a big incident. If you’re forced, for whatever reason, to s- suspend the fleet for a certain period of time, a lot of questions come with that. And the question that you and I know from history that will emerge, is the tech ready? And if the tech’s not ready, you’re gonna have to commit billions more dollars to build this tech. And will the investors give them the, the leeway to do that? That is something that remains unknown, but it’s something that you and I are going to watch, just like we watch the signals each and every week. And every Thursday, Rob and I are here to break down the signals. And if you’re interested, Rob and I offer bespoke advisory services that we can break this down for you even deeper. We can take you and show you the OMEGA algorithm and all sorts of fun things. Send an email to alpha@autnmy.ai. That’s alpha@autnmy.ai. The future is bright. The future autonomous is. The future is The Road to Autonomy Indices. Rob, we did it. It’s launch day, buddy. It’s launch day

Rob Grant: It’s great. It, it is the second-best thing that has happened to me all week, the first being my New York Knicks winning the championship. So that took 53 years to get to, so that’s the only reason it ranks higher than what we accomplished this week. So, but otherwise super excited about it and hopefully the folks that listen to us in whatever medium also take a lot of value out of what we Built

Grayson Brulte: And I just wanna say for the record, ’cause this is archived and this is public, Jalen Brunson will go down as one of the greatest heroes in New York sports history. Mark my words

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