There have been dozens of Tesla Cybertrucks this week in Bentonville, Ark., shuttling startup founders and executives between their private planes and hotels and the row of airplane hangars outside a small, municipal airport where the UP.Summit took place this week.
It’s not every day that so many of the companies I cover actually come to me and the small city I’ve decided to call home. But once a year—when the transportation-focused VC firm UP.Partners hosts this event (this year with Walmart heirs Tom and Steuart Walton as co-hosts)—they do just that.
I’ve spent the last two days peering into the commercial space station the startup Vast plans to send into orbit next year; doing flight simulations for Joby Aviation’s electric air taxi and Regent’s Seaglider vessel; and sitting across from the son of Robinhood cofounder Baiju Bhatt in a mockup of Blue Origin’s astronaut capsule, which is sending people into space. Tesla’s new Cybercab, and two of its Optimus robots, were here for attendees to gawk at, and Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen laughed on stage about the mishap at the initial unveiling of the Cybertruck in 2019, when he threw a steel ball at the window and it broke.
The energy is always high at this annual event—likely in part because of UP.Partners cofounder Cyrus Sigari’s boundless energy and enthusiasm for flying cars and the Jetsons. But there was something else that kept popping up in conversations I had this year: Donald Trump.
If you’ve been paying attention to the transportation and aviation/aerospace industries for any amount of time—flying cars! Mars missions! Autonomous planes!—you know that the enthusiasm around those shiny, cool toys can quickly run dry when you consider the enormous regulatory hurdles that still lie between these companies and many of their products coming to market in the U.S. Here’s an example: Three years ago at this same event, Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton was celebrating his company’s tens of thousands of drone deliveries in Africa. Flash forward to today and I still can’t get anything sent to my house from the company, even though my home is only about a 15-minute drive away from one of their delivery outposts. Executives at transportation companies have long fumbled through questions about certification and product timelines, as there’s so much that is completely out of their control.
But these days, the regulatory piece is actually starting to feel more attainable for many companies that have been playing the waiting game. Adam Woodworth, the CEO of Wing, Alphabet’s drone delivery company, described on stage how his team are in the early stages of scaling up their delivery operations to several cities around the country. I was surprised to hear Walmart innovation executive Greg Cathey be so brazen about Walmart’s plans to bring drone delivery to “most areas that we operate in” due to changes in the regulatory environment. Adam Goldstein, CEO of air taxi startup Archer Aviation, told me about joining the White House’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, a group put together after one of Trump’s executive orders pushed the FAA to accelerate the process of getting air taxis into the skies. And Billy Thalheimer, CEO of Regent, a startup building seaglider vessels to shuttle people—and cargo—along the coasts, said that the speed and clarity with which his company has received responses from the Coast Guard has been significant since Trump was elected.
All this enthusiasm has its limits, of course. Just yesterday, the EV tax credit went away—a notable loss for EV companies like Tesla, Slate Auto, and Scout, which were all present at the Bentonville event. Even for some of the most obvious benefactors of the Trump Administration’s tech agenda, it’s not all milk and roses. Wing CEO Woodworth said he was thrilled to see the new regulation around flying beyond visual line of sight—at first.
“We were less excited when we started reading it, because there’s a lot of steps back in that rule,” Woodworth said on stage, noting how there had already been a lot of progress made between industry and regulators in the time since the initial rule was drafted.
Politics aside, everyone is excited to talk about what comes next—and the money they still want from investors to make it happen. And I sure got a laugh when, upon arriving on my e-bike— at a transportation conference, no less—there was no place to park my bike, and everyone at the check-in counter seemed bewildered as to what I should do with it.
Until next time,
Jessica Mathews
X: @jessicakmathews
Email: jessica.mathews@fortune.com
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VENTURE DEALS
- Einride, a Stockholm, Sweden-based provider of digital, electric, and autonomous solutions for road freight, raised $100 million in funding from EQT Ventures and others.
- Phaidra, a Seattle, Wash.-based developer of AI agents for AI factories, raised $50 million in Series B funding. Collaborative Fund led the round and was joined by Helena, Index Ventures, NVIDIA,
- Vibe.co, a New York City-based ad platform designed to bring hyper-targeting to connected TV, raised $50 million in Series B funding. Hedosophia led the round and was joined by Elaia, Singular, and others.
- Baselane, a New York City-based banking and financial platform designed for real estate investors, raised $34.4 million across Series A and B rounds. Thomvest Ventures led the $20 million Series B round and Matrix Partners led the $14.4 million Series A round.
- Kanastra, a São Paulo, Brazil-based fintech company for private credit funds and securitizations, raised $30 million in Series B funding. F-Prime led the round and was joined by the International Finance Corporation and others.
- Moonlake AI, a San Francisco-based AI research lab, raised $28 million in seed funding from AIX Ventures, Threshold, NVIDIA Ventures, and others.
- Predicta Biosciences, a Cambridge, Mass.-based precision oncology company, raised $23.4 million in Series A funding. Engine Ventures led the round and was joined by Illumina Ventures, Lightchain Capital, Mass General Brigham Ventures, and others.
- Remitee, a Buenos Aires, Argentina-based remittance infrastructure provider, raised $20 million in funding. Krealo led the round and was joined by Copec Wind Ventures, Soma Capital, Redwood Ventures, Latitud, and Algorand.
- Filament, a New York City-based invite-only connection platform for professionals, raised $10.7 million in seed funding from EQT Ventures, Flybridge Capital, Oceans Ventures, and others.
- DJUST, a Paris, France-based business-to-business operations platform, raised €7 million ($8.2 million) in a Series A extension. NEA led the round and was joined by Elaia and Speedinvest.
- Mesta, a San Francisco-based global fiat and stablecoin payment network, raised $5.5 million in seed funding. Village Global led the round and was joined by Circle Ventures, Paxos, Canonical Crypto, WTI, and existing investors Garuda Ventures, Everywhere Ventures, and Inventum Ventures.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Arlington Capital Partners acquired a majority stake in Concord Biomedical Sciences and Emerging Technologies, a Boston, Mass.-based provider of translational research and product development services for the medical device, pharmaceutical, diagnostic, and biomedical research industries. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Future Standard agreed to acquire the Digital Infrastructure platform of Post Road Group, a Stamford, Conn.-based alternative investment advisory platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Magirus, a portfolio company of Mutares, agreed to acquire Achleitner Fahrzeugbau GmbH, a Radfeld, Austria-based designer and developer of customized vehicles for offroad, police, military, and paramilitary application. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- VisuSewer, a portfolio company of Fort Point Capital, acquired MOR Construction Services, a Glen Mills, Penn.-based provider of utility and commercial wastewater infrastructure services. Financial terms were not disclosed.
