Rivian spinout Also was working on an e-moto project in Kenya -- until it walked away

Recapping this week in startups

View this email online in your browser  November 06, 2026 TechCrunch Top 3 Rivian spinout Also was working on an e-moto project in Kenya -- until it walked away: Also co-founder and president Chris Yu told TechCrunch that he wanted to prioritize autonomous vehicles. Read More Zipline hits $21.5B valuation as Walmart expands bet on drone delivery: Zipline raised $1.5 billion and ramped up its partnership with Walmart. Read More Billionaire Palmer Luckey isn't leaving California over the wealth tax: "It's causing a lot of people to run who I don't want to be running," native Californian Palmer Luckey said. "But I'm planning on staying in California. I'm going to keep fighting it." Read More Must-Reads Y Combinator's Garry Tan uses AI agents so much, he spends up to $200K a year on tokens: Y Combinator Garry Tan has jokingly admitted that he's suffered from "cyber psychosis” and barely sleeps sometimes because he’s so excited to be working with his AI agents. On a new episode of Walter Isaacson’s podcast, The Builders, Tan put a price tag on his passion. Read More Salesforce’s M&A spree continues with a reported $375M deal for defense tech startup Rune: The AI logistics startup will bolster the CRM giant's Missionforce defense platform. Read More Harbinger raises $240M after expanding into defense: The Los Angeles-based startup has now raised more than $650 million, and is working on electric trucks, emergency vehicles, and a driverless platform for the military. Read More Trajectory raises $45M to make AI model training accessible to nontechnical experts: The one-year-old startup is now valued at $300 million. Read More Axiom Math wants to keep AI slop out of mathematics: As AI floods math with unchecked proofs, Axiom Math is betting on verification. The startup’s AI agents just formally verified the Stacks Project, one of the field’s biggest libraries. Read More Last but Not Least Food delivery startup Wonder files for IPO as it explores its next big bite: Following years of fundraising, acquisitions, and expansion, food delivery startup Wonder is moving closer to becoming a publicly traded company. Read More Check out some of our other newsletters: StrictlyVC TechCrunch Events TechCrunch Mobility Got a tip? Get in touch securely. Want to advertise on TechCrunch? advertise@techcrunch.com Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. Unsubscribe Member Center Privacy Policy Copyright © 2026 TechCrunch Media LLC 501 2nd Street, Suite 650, San Francisco, CA 94107

Billionaire Palmer Luckey isn't leaving California over the wealth tax

Recapping this week in startups

View this email online in your browser  October 30, 2026 TechCrunch Top 3 Billionaire Palmer Luckey isn't leaving California over the wealth tax: "It's causing a lot of people to run who I don't want to be running," native Californian Palmer Luckey said. "But I'm planning on staying in California. I'm going to keep fighting it." Read More Nvidia backs Indian startup helping companies run AI models with fewer GPUs: Simplismart says its annualized revenue run rate has grown fourteenfold in six months, with the U.S. accounting for more than half its revenue. Read More Ex-Palantir execs launch Dream with $17M from a16z to build AI world models for construction: Dream is grounded in real physics and construction standards. Just as LLMs learn from text, Dream's world model is trained on more than 100 million square feet of building data gathered from permit archives across the United States. Read More A message from R1 AI With a 20-Year Head Start  Most AI spends months learning your business. R1’s Phare Intelligence has decades of provider, payer and claims intelligence already built in, delivering better outcomes from day one.  See the Difference Go Beyond the Bay Area, Join Us at Founder Summit At TechCrunch Founder Summit on November 4 in Boston, you can deepen your expertise on hiring, product market fit, pitching, founder leadership, and much more in a dynamic, intimate environment. Get ahead of the competition and show the world what the East Coast can build with a 25% discount using the code Daily25. Register Now Must-Reads VCs will make billions on Anthropic's IPO, but Amazon is set to make much (much) more: Massive note conversions reveal the true extent of Amazon's ownership in Anthropic. Read More Anduril, Qualcomm launch BlueChip, a new kind of US-made laptop: Anduril founder Palmer Luckey is vowing to bring computer manufacturing back to the U.S., and by that he doesn't just mean assembly, but every individual component, some of which are exclusively made in China today. Read More Re:Build, which spun out Slate Auto, raises $2.1B: The manufacturing accelerator bills itself as "America’s answer to Shenzhen." Read More Can AI data centers be mass-produced like cars? This startup aims to find out: Runware is building a factory to turn out prefabricated AI data centers on an assembly line. The real test will be whether it can deliver at that scale. Read More Databricks co-founder shares his secrets for winning big enterprise customers: Turns out selling to big companies isn’t about having the shiniest tech: It’s about hitching a ride on a giant’s sales team. Read More Last but Not Least Meta AI director Rohit Patel leaves to take on Microsoft Office and Google Workspace: Rohit Patel is departing Meta after eight years working on AI evaluations and reinforcement learning, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. His startup, Ndoc, aims to take on Microsoft Office Suite. Read More Check out some of our other newsletters: StrictlyVC TechCrunch Events TechCrunch Mobility Got a tip? Get in touch securely. Want to advertise on TechCrunch? advertise@techcrunch.com Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. Unsubscribe Member Center Privacy Policy Copyright © 2026 TechCrunch Media LLC 501 2nd Street, Suite 650, San Francisco, CA 94107