The Road to Autonomy

Danny Bernstein, Founder & CEO, RESERVOIR and Paige Bailey, AI Developer Relations Lead, Google DeepMind joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how rugged Physical AI is moving out of simulation and onto the farm.
Simulation alone cannot carry Physical AI into agriculture. Rain, mud, diesel power requirements and extreme heat break systems that perform flawlessly in sim, which is why RESERVOIR built a working farm in Salinas where startups deploy immediately instead of waiting six to nine months after raising capital.
Bonsai Robotics, which tested at RESERVOIR has sold more than 400 robots, and its $60,000 autonomous hybrid tractor flexes between strawberries and vineyards because the team understands grower economics as deeply as robotics.
The farm itself is being redesigned for autonomy. Bayer is breeding broccoli for automated harvest, orchards are moving to two dimensional trellising, and physics is beginning to replace chemicals as California tightens regulation.
Google DeepMind is positioning Gemini and Gemma as the flexible intelligence layer for this shift, from crop vision to on device robotics.

Episode Chapters
00:00 Rugged Physical AI Goes Mainstream
01:02 Google DeepMind's Robotics Ambitions
04:11 Bonsai Robotics' $60,000 Autonomous Tractor
06:43 Why Startups Wait Months to Reach a Farm
10:17 Building Trust Between Growers and Engineers
14:45 Physical AI as a Growth Market
16:24 How Robotics Moved to the Center at Google
18:31 Broccoli Bred for Automation
22:44 Gemini Vision for Crop Scanning
24:39 Is Agriculture Ready for Automation?
26:34 Physics Replacing Chemicals
29:57 Weather Next and Google Earth Engine
33:17 The Future of Physical AI
35:19 AUTNMY AI

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About The Road to Autonomy
The Road to Autonomy provides institutional intelligence for the Autonomy Economy, powered by AUTNMY AI. We built the indices, set the benchmarks, and execute the fieldwork to put decision-ready physical AI intelligence directly into your workflows with OMEGA.
Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.

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This week on Autonomy Signals presented by KPMG, Grayson Brulte and Rob Grant discuss Waymo scaling its robotaxi fleet fivefold, Neolix closing the largest autonomous driving funding round in China this year, and GM betting big on personally owned autonomous vehicles.
Backed by a $5 billion loan and $16 billion in equity, Waymo plans to grow its fleet from roughly 4,000 vehicles to 20,000 by the end of 2027 while expanding into the Madrid and Toronto markets. With capital secured, throughput at its Mesa integration facility is now the binding constraint, and the current pace points closer to 14,000 vehicles.
Neolix raised nearly $400 million in a Series E round and signed an agreement with Malaysian conglomerate Sunway Group to deploy its L4 delivery vehicles across Sunway’s properties. The partnership offers a ready distribution channel and a monsoon season stress test, though Malaysia’s pending data protection framework could raise the cost of expanding across Southeast Asia.
GM plans to sell personally owned eyes off vehicles by 2028, starting with premium full size models using LiDAR, radar, and cameras powered by a liquid cooled central compute unit built in house. Bringing the technology to both EV and combustion lineups reaches GM’s most profitable buyers, but competing capital priorities and Tesla’s L4 ambitions could make the feature look dated on arrival.

Episode Chapters
0:00 KPMG Sponsor Introduction
1:45 Signal 1: Waymo Is Scaling
23:35 Signal 2: Neolix Goes Global
38:37 Signal 3: GM Bets Big on Personal Autonomy

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About The Road to Autonomy
The Road to Autonomy provides Institutional Intelligence for the Autonomy Economy, powered by AUTNMY AI. We built the indices, set the benchmarks, and execute the fieldwork to put decision-ready physical AI intelligence directly into your workflows with OMEGA.

This Week in The Autonomy Economy is the briefing investors and industry leaders read every Sunday as they prepare for the week ahead. Original insight and commentary on the Autonomy Economy.

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This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss field reports from Nashville, Dallas and Houston, takeaways from Tesla’s earnings call, Waymo’s accelerating fleet growth, a mysterious effort to stop robotaxis in Washington, D.C.
In Nashville, Grayson tours two Waymo depots near Nashville International Airport (BNA), including a hillside facility with an estimated 300-to-500-vehicle capacity that he dubs the most secure depot the show has visited. His 25-minute round of autonomy roulette on the Lyft app yielded zero matches, but the airport walk from the terminal door to the Waymo pickup zone clocked in at a seamless 2 minutes and 20 seconds.
In Dallas, which Grayson crowns the robotaxi capital of America, Waymo and Avride continue to scale as hundreds of unbadged Tesla Cybercabs sit in a staging lot near Dallas Love Field. In Houston, at the Uber/Nuro/Lucid depot, Grayson spotted just six robotaxis and zero unsupervised operations.
Turning to the Tesla earnings call, the hosts analyze FSD attach rates hitting 75%, renewed plans allowing owners to loan personal vehicles into the fleet, and the slip of the 24/7 service target to year-end. Grayson also connects the dots on why Tesla announced its four expansion cities (Las Vegas, Jacksonville, Phoenix, and San Antonio) in an order directly tracking physical depot construction.
Meanwhile, Walt reacts to a Semafor report projecting Waymo could scale to 20,000 vehicles by the end of next year, surpassing his own 15,000-vehicle estimate, as Waymo launches service at Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) and eyes Madrid (2027) and Toronto (2028).
Closing out on the Foreign Autonomy Desk, a VW MOIA van was spotted testing in Europe bearing Wayve decals instead of Mobileye, while France signaled renewed regulatory backing for autonomous fleets.

Episode Chapters
0:00 Nashville Field Report
08:38 Dallas Field Report
13:20 Avis Waymo Depot Buildout in Dallas
15:36 Houston Field Report
19:55 NHTSA Administrator Morrison Interview
21:08 Tesla Earnings
25:15 Waymo and Tesla Depot Infrastructure Buildout
27:17 Semafor Report: 20,000 Waymos by End of Next Year
28:43 Tesla Unsupervised Miles and 24/7 Service
31:17 Robotaxi Pricing vs. Rideshare
33:08 Tesla’s Four New Cities and the Depot Ground Truth
33:45 Waymo's Las Vegas Airport, Madrid and Toronto Expansions
35:08 Uber Nears 100 Fully Autonomous WeRide Vehicles in the UAE
37:19 Hertz, Avis and the Depot Market
39:46 GM’s $20 Billion Buyback
45:12 People First Transportation Alliance
51:06 London Driver Protests and TfL Robotaxi Caps
51:56 Santa Monica Leases Lots to Zoox
55:01 Foreign Autonomy Desk
56:08 Next Week

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About The Road to Autonomy
The Road to Autonomy provides institutional intelligence for the Autonomy Economy, powered by AUTNMY AI. We built the indices, set the benchmarks, and execute the fieldwork to put decision-ready physical AI intelligence directly into your workflows with OMEGA.
Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.

📬 Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dermot O’Driscoll, Dermot O'Driscoll, Vice President, Go-To-Market, Physical AI, Arm, joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss scaling physical AI across the automotive and robotics markets.
Arm is positioning its energy-efficient compute architecture at every layer of Physical AI, leveraging 30 years of automotive IP safety expertise alongside its mobile power-efficiency heritage. With robotics facing strict battery, weight, and thermal constraints, Arm’s low-power compute stack is essential to enabling extended operational runtimes.
To solve ecosystem fragmentation and accelerate physical AI toward its ChatGPT moment, Arm recently launched its Robotics Capability Framework, a Level 0–5 framework inspired by SAE Levels of Driving Automation. The initiative aims to standardize capabilities and foster cross-layer collaboration among chipmaker, software, model, and hardware developers, attracting over 80 industry partners within its first month.
Across the autonomous vehicle landscape, Arm architecture powers key chipsets in robotaxis, including ADAS controllers, in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), ECUs, and sensors, while creating new opportunities for immersive in-cabin experiences like 4D gaming.
Arm is currently projecting the physical AI compute market to grow from $25 billion today to $200 billion in the early 2030s. This 8x to 10x expansion will be driven by autonomous mobility and AI deployment across physical GDP sectors including agriculture, mining, shipping, and logistics.

Episode Chapters
0:00 Growth of Physical AI Explosion
02:33 Arm's Heritage in Automotive & Mobile Compute
06:02 Why Low-Power Architecture Unlocks Robotics
08:00 Scaling Physical AI & Standardizing Capabilities
10:00 Arm's Robotics Capability Framework
13:35 Ecosystem Defragmentation
18:30 High-Performance Compute Constraints
22:00 Standardizing Robotic Architectures
25:19 Arm's Physical AI Business Unit
27:24 Comparing Physical AI Growth to Early Cloud Adoption
31:57 Robotaxi Compute Architecture
35:45 In-Vehicle Infotainmen Experiences
37:56 -$200B Compute Market Opportunity
42:26 Industrial Markets
47:34 5-Year Outlook for Physical AI
49:01 AUTNMY AI

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About The Road to Autonomy
The Road to Autonomy provides institutional intelligence for the Autonomy Economy, powered by AUTNMY AI. We built the indices, set the benchmarks, and execute the fieldwork to put decision-ready physical AI intelligence directly into your workflows with OMEGA.
Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.

📬 Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss new field reports from San Antonio and Dallas, management turnover at Uber, Tesla’s Cybercab progress in Austin and upcoming Dallas expansion, regulatory shifts across the US and Europe, and Wayve’s momentum in securing major OEM partnerships.
Grayson shares his experience taking a Waymo ride to the San Antonio International Airport (SAT), highlighting the seamless curbside drop-off that took under four minutes to reach security, while contrasting it with his SFO experience. With more field reports on the way, Grayson and Walt discuss key executive departures at Uber and what it might be signaling to the market.
In Austin, Tesla reportedly surpassed 300 Cybercabs as they prepare to expand Cybercab to Dallas. Across the pond in London, the politics around deploying robotaxis are heating up as Tesla rebrands FSD in Europe to Assisted Driving.

Episode Chapters
0:00 Waymo San Antonio Airport Experience
05:57 Motional’s Las Vegas Technical Center & Hyundai IONIQ 5 Upfitting
08:33 Private Ownership vs. Robotaxi Fleets
12:58 Human Factors and SAE Level 4
14:27 Autonomy Subscriptions
16:04 Dallas and Europe Field Reports
18:03 Uber's Management Turmoil
21:21 Uber's Lofty 15 City Robotaxi Goal
23:29 Growing Number of Cybercabs in Austin
28:01 Cybercab's Pending Dallas Launch
32:01 Waymo Opens Nashville Airport (BNA) Service
36:11 Zoox’s NHTSA Authorization for Hayward, California
38:17 Wayve's Potential Volkswagen Deal
41:18 Applied Intuition
43:29 Red Tape and Regulations
56:48 Verne's Shift Towards Fleet Management
59:25 Next Week

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About The Road to Autonomy
The Road to Autonomy provides institutional intelligence for the Autonomy Economy, powered by AUTNMY AI. We built the indices, set the benchmarks, and execute the fieldwork to put decision-ready physical AI intelligence directly into your workflows with OMEGA.
Join institutional investors and industry leaders who read This Week in The Autonomy Economy every Sunday. Each edition delivers exclusive insight and commentary on the autonomy economy, helping you stay ahead of what's next.

📬 Sign up for This Week in The Autonomy Economy newsletter
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.