While autonomous driving has long relied on machine learning to plan routes and detect objects, some companies and researchers are now betting that generative AI -- models that take in data of their surroundings and generate predictions -- will help bring autonomy to the next stage. Wayve, a Waabi competitor, released a comparable model last year that is trained on the video that its vehicles collect. Waabi's model works in a similar way to image or video generators like OpenAI's DALL-E and Sora. It takes point clouds of lidar data, which visualize a 3D map of the car's surroundings, and breaks them into chunks, similar to how image generators break photos into pixels. Based on its training data, Copilot4D then predicts how all points of lidar data will move.

Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasan, a computer scientist and University of Toronto professor, sees a new path to commercializing self-driving technology. Computer scientist Raquel Urtasan, an artificial intelligence expert who led a team of Toronto-based engineers for Uber's self-driving vehicle program, is launching tech startup Waabi with an $83.5 million funding round and a new "AI mindset" approach to commercializing automated driving. The Series A round, among the biggest for any Canadian tech startup, is led by Khosla Ventures and includes investment from Uber, Radical Ventures, 8VC, OMERS Ventures and BDC Capital's Women in Technology Venture Fund. Aurora Innovation, the self-driving tech company that acquired Uber ATG last December, is a minority investor. AI experts including Stanford University's Fei-Fei Li, the University of Toronto's Geoffrey Hinton and Sanja Fidler and the University of California, Berkeley's Pieter Abbeel also participated in the round.

While the governments of the United States and China are pushing policies for technological decoupling, private tech firms continue to tap resources from both sides. In the field of autonomous vehicles, it's common to see Chinese startups -- or startups with a strong Chinese link -- keep operations and seek investments in both countries. But as these companies mature and expand globally, their ties to China also come under increasing scrutiny. When TuSimple, a self-driving truck company headquartered in San Diego, filed for an initial public offering on Nasdaq this week, its prospectus flagged a regulatory risk due to its Chinese funding source. On March 1, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) requested a written notice from TuSimple regarding an investment by Sun Dream, an affiliate of Sina Corporation, which runs China's biggest microblogging platform Sina Weibo.

Progress on self-driving technology has been slower than many people expected just a few years ago. Google's Waymo was aiming to launch a fully driverless taxi service by the end of 2018 but missed its deadline. GM's Cruise abandoned plans to launch a commercial service in 2019. Tesla has repeatedly fallen short of Elon Musk's optimistic timelines for delivering fully self-driving technology. They have plenty of cash and can keep working on the problem as long as they need to. But it is a big challenge for some of their competitors: independent self-driving startups that rely on venture capital to stay afloat.

Autonomous vehicles were supposed to make human drivers obsolete. But the coronavirus pandemic is exposing how a technology designed to be human-free still relies on a large workforce of contract laborers at almost every level. The Verge reached out to 10 autonomous vehicle developers to find out what they were doing in response to the coronavirus outbreak. Almost all of them said they would be grounding their fleets for at least several weeks as they monitor the spread of the virus. But the fate of human backup drivers who ride around in the vehicles is less certain.

Snowflake Computing, which helps companies move their data onto the cloud, leaped to first place from #20 last year and is currently hiring for positions in engineering and sales. Dosist is the first cannabis-centric company to ever make the Top Startups U.S. list. The company is rapidly growing due to the legalization of recreational marijuana (in 11 U.S. states so far) combined with its high-gloss marketing appeal. Samsara combines the power of hardware (think sensors and cameras) with analytical software to boost efficiency in industries like trucking and food production, and it has 180 open roles across everything from engineering to sales to marketing. DoorDash has doubled its employee base every year in its six-year history, and with its recent acquisition of competitor Caviar, the startup is revving up its growth. Brex, another newcomer to the list, is attempting to reinvent B2B financial services, starting with a first-of-its-kind corporate card for startups based on funding rather than credit history. Good American, a fitness fashion line founded by Khloe Kardashian, marks a shift in the retail landscape with its success as a body-positive company offering an inclusive range of sizes. Robinhood, the only company from 2018 to remain in the top ten, continues to grow by recruiting people who share its vision of democratizing the financial system. Peloton Interactive, another newcomer to the list, is shaking up the fitness industry with its live and recorded classes connected to at-home equipment. Compass has become the country's largest independent real estate brokerage, and it's planning to hire hundreds across its product and engineering teams over the next year to help build its end-to-end platform. Nuro, a robotics company in the race to get self-driving right with its small delivery pods, is expanding across all areas of its business with open roles in marketing, communications, engineering, and human resources. Glossier, the online beauty retailer is known for its millennial pink packaging, generated $100 million in sales last year and is now valued at $1.2 billion. When hiring for one of its 43 open positions, Glossier stresses the importance of transferable skills over beauty industry expertise.

The automobile industry has never taken a break from innovating since the debut of the Motorwagen, the world's first car. Automakers are continuously attempting to make their vehicles faster, safer, and more comfortable. To make driving more comfortable car manufacturers looked to automation technologies to make driving less tedious. To start with, (Level 1) automation enhanced the quality of driving using technologies like cruise control. Taking things a step further, cars began to feature assisted steering and acceleration (Level 2).

Toyota Motor Corp is boosting investment in startup companies to get a better handle on emerging technologies that could potentially disrupt its existing business, according to the head of Toyota's corporate venture arm.

With a budget of $100 million, the company now has disclosed investments in seven early-stage startups, from Boston to London to Tel Aviv. The common thread is advanced technology -- notably artificial intelligence, robotics and big data -- that is expected to power self-driving cars and on-demand ride sharing fleets.

Among the startups funded in part by Intel Capital, the chipmaker's venture capital arm, are: Peloton Technology, a Silicon Valley startup in Mountain View, California, focused on automating heavy-duty trucks. Not all U.S. presidents are missed once they leave the White House. In Brexit's wake, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is calling for another vote. Bostic will be the first African-American and first openly gay man to head a regional Fed bank. The president reportedly wants to receive the Chinese premier at his Florida estate in April.