Your favorite podcast — Zag Talk — is back for an all new season. Today we kick things off by chatting with Seth Cohen, Co-Founder of Sweetfin, a 15-unit fast casual restaurant chain focused on poké, raw fish and bowls. Oftentimes on the podcast we talk about delivery innovations — new robotics, product launches, policy changes, etc. — but Seth takes us through the nitty-gritty of making delivery actually work for a real business. And no surprise: it’s not easy! While “the economics used to be very clear,” he makes the case that it’s now very hard to understand how much you’re actually paying for a delivery order, and whether or not restaurants have become overly reliant on price-conscious consumers scrolling the 3PD apps just looking for the best deal.
There’s plenty of other industry news to bite into this week as well: I’m joined by Greg and Sela as we discuss the latest robotaxi trials and tribulations (in both the U.S. and Europe,) TrueCar’s interesting go-private deal, and why India and China are trying to crack down on super-fast / super-cheap delivery. Listen in!
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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP
AV overload! Yesterday’s Urban Autonomy Summit was a huge success! Thank you to everyone that came out, we’ll be releasing recordings and photos shortly. In the meantime, some of the most recent news that our esteemed panelists got into: Waabi raised $1 billion (a record for Canadian startups) and plans to move its AV trucking tech into robotaxis for Uber. Meanwhile Lyft and the City of Hamburg are pioneering a framework to launch AV taxis in Germany, while Gatik started commercial autonomous trucking operations. Down in San Diego, the local transportation operator has come out against self-driving vehicles, while Waymos just went live in Miami.
Man vs machine: New reports from our partners at Obi and Gridwise paint an interesting picture of the evolving dynamic as AVs and human-powered ridehails go head-to-head. Obi’s data shows Waymo’s price premium over Uber and Lyft has narrowed to 12-27%, while Gridwise showed that driver earnings came down in cities where humans face robotic competition.
Micromobility keeps on spinning: Third Lane Mobility, the parent co. of shared micromobility operators Bird and Spin, just raised $20 million in new funding, powering plans to deploy 35,000 new vehicles this year, in markets like Atlanta, LA, Nashville, Seattle, Rome and Tel Aviv. While not the humongous rounds of the ZIRP era, this is a nice validation that the company’s found sustainable financial footing. Third Lane’s also creating a new Transportation Advisory Board, helmed by Gabe Klein, to work with cities on better plans and processes.
The sky’s the limit! Drone deliverer Zipline just hauled in $600 million, bringing its total funding to a cool $7.6B. Zipline has now made over two million deliveries, and plans to expand to Houston and Phoenix in the coming months.
The world keeps building transit: The Transport Politic has charted out all the new public transit lines that opened in 2025, with China managing to cut the ribbon on a whopping 930 kilometers of new metro and light rail service. Meanwhile, we should give some honorable mentions to cities like Tampere, Finland which inaugurated 4.7 km of new light rail, and Ahvaz, Iran which should open 23.3 km of new metro in 2026. In 1990, America boasted four of the world’s top twenty metro systems; in another few years we’ll have zero…
Why can’t we have nice things too? Because we lost the state capacity to keep costs in check! Two fresh examples… LA Metro approved (yay) the Sepulveda Pass Transit Corridor, connecting the San Fernando Valley with the Basin via heavy rail. But the board opted for a modified project, cutting a few miles (and multiple useful rail connections) off the project, which had swollen from an estimated $6 billion to a whopping $24.2 billion (and even that’s in 2023 dollars.) The project is now only about 9 miles, and includes just four stations, so it’ll be unclear what they can blame the costs on when the newest estimates come out. Meanwhile, Arizona legislators pulled the plug on a rail extension that had ballooned to about $400M for just three quarters of a mile of street-running operations.
Tesla sturm und drang: Oh Elon… the automaker pulled its safety drivers out of its Austin robotaxi pilot, only for it to be revealed they’re instead just trailing behind in another car (optics, baby!) Meanwhile, at the behest of CA regulators, the company is renaming and rejiggering some of its ADAS products, making its lane-keeping feature only available via subscription. And maybe Tesla doesn’t even want to be an automaker any more; yesterday’s quarterly earnings update saw car sales tumble 9%, with the company planning to discontinue its Model S and X and instead make humanoids and offer transportation as a service. One spot of good news, depending on your perspective, Alex Roy did just managed to drive a Model 3 cross-country without a single disengagement.
Not so SMART: In a sad development, SMART grant funding has been zeroed out in 2026 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) funding, with the remaining $204M in funds reallocated to other programs. SMART grants have been a big driver of cities’ curbside innovations, alongside other tech-forward deployments. Overall transit funding notched a slight gain in funding, working out to about seven tenths of a percent.
Super-app-ifragilisticexpialidocious: InDrive, the bid-based ridehailing platform that’s big in emerging markets, is the latest mobility platform to set its sights on becoming a “super app.” The company’s recently launched grocery delivery and in-app advertising (love those margins!) which has helped grow these new revenue streams to 15% of the overall sales mix.
Calling all climate-tech founders! Our friends at the L.A. Cleantech Incubator are launching their Brooklyn Army Terminal innovation hub (talk about an east coast - west coast collab!) and now they’re about to start their first round of pilots. Learn more on Feb. 5 about BATWorks’ plan to support companies deploying technology in live operating environments while building traction with NYC based partners.
Well this won’t help our cities rebound… U.S. population growth slowed to some of the lowest levels in history, fueled largely by a huge outflow of immigrants. In a move that will only worsen matters, states like Texas and Florida are now looking to curtail H-1B visa holders. Maaaaybe this immigration and civil rights crack down has gone far enough to shake a few Republicans from the cause: “Latinas for Trump” Co-Founder and Florida State Senator Ileana Garcia says “It’s gone too far” (after she was profiled by TSA at the airport.) I guess the meme about leopards eating faces has finally come true…
Still golden: Startup seed funding deal sizes have reached record bigness, with over 40% of seed and Series A investment in the year so far going to rounds of $100M+. And despite all the naysayers, California-based companies pulled in 63% of all startup funding last year, a record high.
A few good links: Austin gets ok from feds for watered down light rail. Brightline bonds downgraded to junk. On the need for autonomy-focused infrastructure. Atlanta officials secretly paused plans to advance voter-backed light rail project. Luna raises €1.5M for AI-powered bike and motorcycle rider assistance. Automotus and INRIX partner on real-time curb occupancy data. Foxconn and Mitsubishi Fuso plan EV bus. Trump Admin plans to redevelop DC neighborhood. Jascha Franklin-Hodge steps down as Boston’s Chief of Streets. Samsung scales up food delivery bot. Three years after opening of $12B+ opening, NYC’s East Side Access hasn’t resulted in improved travel times for most commuters. NJ to require e-bike licenses. SF reconsidering delivery bots. New data shows EV adoption results in better air locally. Toronto to open Eglinton Crosstown LRT on 2/8, hopefully it’s faster than the last line they debuted. Amazon gives up on Amazon Fresh branded grocery stores. LA launches new streamlined development services bureau, but local builders think this is more akin to shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. French government sets goal of 70k carsharing vehicles by 2031 (meanwhile the U.K. is letting their industry whither.) California beats its clean automotive goals. How streets shape behavior. German government delays train improvements. Instead of trying to stop loud NIMBYs from holding up transit projects that have been approved by a super-majority, LA Metro wants the state to undo its just-passed law that upzoned housing near transit. Sacramento to break ground on sorta-light rail, sorta-streetcar project (what’s in a name, anyway?) Hoboken camera enforcement is a policy success but politicians need to grow spines.
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