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Earlier this month, TechCrunch held its annual Mobility Sessions event down in San Jose, where leading mobility-focused auto companies, startups, executives and thought leaders joined us to discuss all things autonomous vehicle technology, micromobility and electric vehicles.

Extra Crunch is offering members access to full transcripts key panels and conversations from the event, including a mainstage conversation between Waymo CTO Dmitri Dolgov and TechCrunch mobility axe Kirsten Korosec. Dmitri and Kirsten dove into Waymo’s full product evolution, and dissect the path ahead for the company and the AV industry as a whole.

Dmitri Dolgov: So essentially, what makes this problem interesting in my mind is that it’s not one or two things where you say “there’s only this one challenge that remains and then you solve everything.” It’s really across a whole number of different areas — a whole number of different disciplines from hardware, to more advanced sensors, more powerful sensors, sensors you can manufacture at scale, cheaper sensors, more powerful compute, cheaper compute software.

You mentioned sensor fusion — this is actually where the software plays very nicely with the hardware and that connection is very deep. And our approach at Waymo is interesting in that we build our own software and hardware in house.

So this is where we have access to very powerful sensors, and not just having the increased range and increased resolution, but also having access to the raw sensor data, like the raw measurements that you get from lidars from cameras from radars, and doing sensor fusion at a later stage, where you can really bring to bear modern, deep learning algorithms to have models that learn to pick out the best signal from those different sensing modalities. That’s a very active area of improvement.

Dmitri also goes into more depth on the specific technical areas of improvements for AV technology and the importance of simulation miles when building a polished mobility product. Dmitri and Kirsten also talk through the regulatory road map and the impact it will play on AV rollouts, AV product quality, as well as on cities and society as a whole.

For access to the full transcription below and for the opportunity to read through additional event transcripts and recaps, become a member of Extra Crunch. Learn more and try it for free. 

Kirsten Korosec: Thanks, everyone for coming out. And we’re all here to talk to the CTO [Dmitri Dolgov] of Waymo. So I’m going to just let you roll with it. I’m wondering if you showed up in a self-driving car today, How’d you get here?

Dmitri Dolgov: I took a self-driving car to work today. Then I met with some folks there. And we took another car to here.

Korosec: So manually driven car from Mountain View. But My understanding is that you actually use Waymo self-driving cars quite a bit. You’re one of the most prolific users of the vehicle, correct?

Dolgov: Yeah. Nowadays, this is my default mode of transportation around town, I take our cars to work pretty much every day. I take them to get around town to run some errands. And actually, recently, there was a change that happened in California – we got the permit from the CPUC, the California Public Utilities Commission, that allowed us to take passengers in cars that are not employees of Waymo.

So now I can take my family and I have to go to the grocery store and I actually did that recently. I had to go with my son and instead of me doing the silly old thing of me driving around in my own car, we hopped into a Waymo. And that was cool.

Microsoft today published three data sharing agreements that it hopes can function as a basis for other organizations who want to create similar documents.

In today’s announcement, Erich Anderson, Corporate Vice President and Chief IP Counsel at Microsoft, argues that while there are plenty of organizations that want to work together on shared datasets, the logistics of creating these agreements — with months of time spent on negotiating and talking to lawyers — often stall or stop these projects.

“We want to help make it easier for individuals and organizations that want to share data to do so,” Anderson writes. “Often, agreements for broad data sharing scenarios are unnecessarily long and complex. We also think there is an important role for agreements that limit rights to computational use for AI. Further, we think the state of the art on data sharing for proprietary and private data sets is changing rapidly and the terms available publicly could be improved and better explained.”

The three agreements focus on slight different use cases. One is the “Computational Use of Data Agreement” for sharing data from publicly available sources for computational purposes that don’t include any personal data, for example. The “Data Use Agreement for Open AI Model Development,” on the other hand, is all about training AI models with data that could include personal data, while the “Open Use of Data Agreement” focuses, as the name implies, on making data publicly available.

Anderson stresses that Microsoft is making these licenses available for community review and input. “Going forward, our aim is to work with interested stakeholders to improve these agreements and to offer additional ones that cover a wide range of data sharing scenarios,” he notes.

Since the launch of its first electric scooter in 2015, Gogoro co-founder and CEO Horace Luke has frequently been asked when the startup is going to expand beyond Taiwan. In its home country, Gogoro’s two-wheel vehicles, with their distinctive swappable battery system, are now the top-selling electric scooters.

But Luke says the company has always seen itself as a platform company, with the ultimate goal of providing a turnkey solution for energy-efficient vehicles. Now with the launch of GoShare*, its new vehicle-sharing platform, and partnerships with manufacturers such as Yamaha, Gogoro is ready to go global.

Founded by Luke, HTC’s former chief innovation officer, and chief technology officer Matt Taylor in 2011, Gogoro develops most of its technology in-house, including scooter motors, telematics units, backend servers and software. GoShare’s pilot program will launch next month in Taoyuan City, where Gogoro’s research and development center is located, with the goal of expanding with partners into cities around the world over the next year, starting in Europe, Australia and Southeast Asia.

“Gogoro has always been out with a thesis that we will be a platform enabler,” Luke told Extra Crunch during an interview in the company’s Taipei City headquarters. “Now you’ve seen the transformation of the company. Doing something this big, like what Gogoro is doing, takes time.”

Since the release of Gogoro’s first Smartscooter in 2015, the company says it has become the best-selling brand of electric two-wheel vehicles in Taiwan, holding a 17 percent share of the country’s vehicle market, including gas vehicles.

Last year, the company began licensing its technology to manufacturers Yamaha, Aeon and PGO to produce scooters that run on Gogoro’s batteries and charging infrastructure. It also has a partnership with Coup, the European electric-scooter sharing startup that plans to increase its fleet to more than 5,000 scooters on the streets of Paris, Berlin, Madrid and Tübingen this year, and is seeking similar deals with other vehicle-sharing services, as well as local governments that want to reduce traffic and pollution (the GoShare pilot program is being launched in collaboration with Taoyuan City’s government).

GoShare’s platform is meant to be a “very robust and cost-effective, very worry-free solution for municipalities and entrepreneurs,” Luke says. Parts of the system can be licensed separately or packaged as a turnkey solution that can be deployed in as little as two weeks.

The company describes GoShare as a “mobility solution.” When asked if this means the platform can be used for other electric vehicles, including cars, Luke says “just think of us as batteries and a motor.”

“It’s just like computers and processing ram,” he adds. “It can be any form factor. It just happens to be that the two-wheel form factor is the one we’re working on and focusing on at the moment.”

Startups looking to expand the reach of financial services continue to receive a nod from investors. Zeta, a fintech firm that runs a full stack neo-banking platform and offers enterprise payments solutions, said today its valuation reached $300 million in its maiden outside funding.

Sodexo BRS funded Zeta’s Series C round to take a minority stake in the company. Zeta executives declined to reveal the size of the funding, but a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch the amount was under $60 million.

This is the first time Zeta — or its CEO and co-founder Bhavin Turakhia — has raised money from an outside party, he told TechCrunch in an interview.

Turakhia, 39, has co-founded a number of companies over the years including ad-tech firm Media.net, which was sold for $900 million, and team collaboration and productivity app Flock. Flock too has not raised any outside capital to date.

Zeta operates in Asia and Latin America and counts companies and banks looking to bring retail and corporate fintech products as its potential clients. Its full stack cloud-native neo-banking platform supports issuance of credit, debit and prepaid products. Its enterprise solutions features support for TnE cards, P-cards, expense management, salary disbursement, and corporate gifting.

The firm has already amassed over 2 million users, three different banks and financial institutions including Sodexo that use Zeta’s platform and over 14,000 corporate clients including Amazon . Multiple banks in India are using Zeta’s corporate gifting service.

The new capital will be used to expand the company’s business in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Southeast Asia, Turakhia and Ramki Gaddipati, the startup’s CTO and cofounder, told TechCrunch in an interview. It has already signed contracts with many partners to facilitate the expansion in the next six months.

The firm, which today employs about 450 people, also plans to grow its team and set up offices in many more places across the globe.

“There hasn’t been many zero to one innovations in the banking ecosystem in the last 20 years,” said Turakhia. “If you look at the banking space, it has been dominated by licensed software from legacy organizations. Many of these companies still provide most of the stacks that run most of the payment systems around the world for banks and non-banks.”

So like a growing number of companies, Zeta is betting that it is a pivotal time to disrupt this. “That was the genesis of starting Zeta, building new and innovative technology stack that enables interesting use cases for banks and other bank-line financial institutions that want to issue credit, debit, or prepaid products and provide their customers with enhanced functionalities,” he said.

And that opportunity is what led Turakhia to seek outside capital, he said. “In the next five to seven years, I want to make Zeta 20 to 30 times bigger than any exit I have ever had,” he said.

Additionally, Zeta also saw value that Sodexo, which operates globally, could bring to its platform.

In a statement, Aurelien Sonet, CEO, BRS at Sodexo, said, “Sodexo has been a strategic partner of Zeta since 2017. This investment will enable the Sodexo group to benefit from Zeta’s comprehensive suite of solutions and offer a seamless payment experience to our consumers. Zeta and Sodexo are already working together on deploying Zeta’s platform across several Sodexo subsidiaries across different regions.”

Last call, startuppers! TechCrunch’s Silicon Valley summer soiree — a.k.a. the 14th Annual TechCrunch Summer Party — is nearly sold out. If you want to join the brightest members of the startup community on July 25 and celebrate your intrepid entrepreneurial spirit, you’d best buy a ticket while you can. It’s now o’clock, people!

This annual event is a true startup tradition. It’s a chance to enjoy the company of your peers and make new connections in a beautiful setting. It’s tough to beat an evening at San Francisco’s Park Chalet. Relax and enjoy the ocean views, craft beer, imaginative cocktails and tasty appetizers.

In between the drinks, the food and the fun you might find that startup magic happens at TechCrunch parties. Who knows, you could meet future co-founders, collaborators or investors — it can and does happen.

How often do you have the chance to build connections with top investors over a cold beer? You do at this shindig. Along with our lead VC partner, Merus Capital, August Capital, Battery Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, Data Collective, General Catalyst and Uncork Capital will be in the house.

We’ll also have a group of exciting early-stage startups displaying their tech and talent, so be sure to check ’em out.

Here are the essential Summer Party details:

• When: July 25 from 5:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
• Where: Park Chalet in San Francisco
• How much: $95

As always, we’ll mix things up with games and great door prizes. You could win TechCrunch swag, Amazon Echos and tickets to Disrupt San Francisco 2019.

The 14th Annual TechCrunch Summer Party takes place on July 25. So much fun, so much opportunity, so few tickets left. Don’t end up on the wrong side of “sold out.” Buy one of the last remaining tickets right now.

Thumbtack just closed a new funding round of $150 million. Sequoia is leading the round, and the company is now valued at $1.7 billion. TechCrunch’s Kate Clark previously reported that the startup was raising again, but that it was a tough process.

In a candid blog post, co-founder and CEO Marco Zappacosta admits that the company faced multiple challenges. Thumbtack started as a simple marketplace for local professionals.

Clients could post a message saying that they were looking for carpenters, wedding planners or house cleaning services. Professionals then scrolled through listings and sent quotes. Customers eventually picked a professional.

While it was a huge hit, it didn’t scale well and created a ton of issues. “We took a business that was growing more than 80% year over year and we pressed pause,” Zappacosta wrote.

The startup rewrote the back end, created a new front end, pivoted to a new business model and essentially created a new product.

Thumbtack now automatically generates quotes based on your needs and your location. Given that you can get quotes in a few minutes, it didn’t make sense to charge professionals every time they send a quote. Now, professionals pay Thumbtack a small fee when customers contact them after a quote.

“Now growth has reaccelerated dramatically, and we have the runway to make Thumbtack the only platform they need to find the right customers,” Zappacosta wrote.

So it sounds like Thumbtack has seen the light at the end of the tunnel. With today’s new funding round, the company can now focus on attracting service providers again. According to the Wall Street Journal, this could be the last funding round before Thumbtack files to go public.

Huawei this week cut 600 positions from its Futurewei Technologies U.S. research arm, which operates out of Silicon Valley, Chicago, Washington State and Dallas. The move, which represents 70 percent of the division’s 850 roles, follows the hardware giant’s blacklisting by the U.S. government.

Reuters initially reported the news via a source from the company who noted that work has been more or less nonexistent for the branch for more than two months. “On the 17th of May, Huawei asked everyone at Futurewei to upload everything to the Huawei cloud, right before the ban took effect,” the source told the agency. “After that basically Futurewei has stopped doing any work — almost stopped everything.”

Huawei has since acknowledged the move, writing, “Futurewei Technologies announces a reduction in force, directly impacting over 600 US positions.”

The research wing has played a keyl role in filing thousands of patents for Huawei, including ones relating to 5G. That network technology has been at the center of recent concerns in the U.S., as red flags have been raised around Huawei’s networking equipment and potential ties to the Chinese government.

Huawei’s addition to the U.S. Commerce Department’s “entity list” has already had wide ranging impacts on the company that could ultimately prove hugely detrimental, banning access to essential technologies from American companies like Google and international component makers like ARM.

Earlier this week, another report surface tying Huawei to North Korea’s 3G network, a move that could potentially be in violation of U.S. sanctions against the country.

Last July, Google announced its Contact Center AI product for helping businesses get more value out of their contact centers. Contact Center AI uses a mix of Google’s machine learning-powered tools to help build virtual agents and help human agents as they do their job. Today, the company is launching several updates to this product that will, among other things, bring improved speech recognition features to the product.

As Google notes, its automated speech recognition service gets to very high accuracy rates, even on the kind of noisy phone lines that many customers use to complain about their latest unplanned online purchase. To improve these numbers, Google is now launching a feature called ‘Auto Speech Adaptation in Dialogflow,” (with Dialogflow being Google tool for building conversational experiences). With this, the speech recognition tools are able to take the context of the conversation into account and hence improve their accuracy by about 40 percent, according to Google.

In addition, Google is also launching a new model phone model for understanding short utterances, which is now about 15 percent more accurate for U.S. English, as well as a number of other updates that improve transcription accuracy, make the training process easier and allow for endless audio streaming to the Cloud Speech-to-Text API, which previously had a 5-minute limit.

If you want to, you can also now natively download MP3s of the audio (and then burn them to CDs, I guess).

Lyft is offering a set of autonomous driving data to to the public that it calls the “largest public dataset of its kind,” containing over 55,000 3D frames of captured footage, hand-labeled by human reviewers, data collected by 7 cameras and as many as 3 lidars depending on the car used, plus a drivable surface map and HD spatial semantic data that corresponds to the captured info to provide context to researchers.

The data set is the work of Lyft Level 5, the division fo the ride-hailing company that is responsible for its research and development of self-driving vehicle technology (hence the name, which is borrowed from SAE’s levels of autonomy for cars, with Level 5 being the highest). In a blog post detailing the move, Lyft notes that this part of the company has been working on its hardware and self-driving software for two years and wanted to make some of the data its collected in that time public in order to “help level the playing field for all researchers interested in autonomous technology.”

Lyft Level 5 EVP of Autonomous Technology Luc Vincent notes in the post that the company is “committed to democratizing access to this tech,” and plans to continue to “release additional data” going forward. Lyft will also host a competition to inspire use of the data, with $25,000 in cash prizes and a presentation plus job interview opportunity at the NeurIPS conference this December.

That job interview opp is key to understanding why Lyft would want to make public this data its collecting. Other autonomous driving companies have done similar things, including Aptiv for example, and there is indeed obviously some interest in sharing with other researchers in the field, since many of the people working at these companies come from a collaborative academic background. But it’s also a self-interested move, because it definitely helps these companies recruit talent, in a hiring market that is competitive with few qualified individuals to go around.

Still, regardless of motivation, it’s definitely a net benefit to have datasets like this available to the public. Meanwhile, Lyft is currently working on its third generation of self-driving car, which includes a new sensor array with its own, proprietary camera with ultra-HDR capabilities.

CircleCI launched way back in 2011 when the notion of continuous delivery was just a twinkle in most developer’s eyes, but over the years with the rise of agile, containerization and DevOps, we’ve seen the idea of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) really begin to mainstream with developers. Today, CircleCI was rewarded with a $56 million Series D investment.

The round was led by Owl Rock Capital Partners and Next Equity. Existing investors Scale Venture Partners, Top Tier Capital, Threshold Ventures (formerly DFJ), Baseline Ventures, Industry Ventures, Heavybit and Harrison Metal Capital also participated in the round. CircleCI’s most recent funding prior to this round was $31 million Series C last January. Today’s investment brings the total raised to $115.5 million, according to the company.

CircleCI CEO Jim Rose sees a market that’s increasingly ready for the product his company is offering. “As we’re putting more money to work, there are just more folks that are now moving away from aspiring about doing continuous delivery and really leaning into the idea of, ‘We’re a software company, we need to know how to do this well, and we need to be able to automate all the steps between the time our developers are making changes to the code until that application gets in front of the customer,'” Rose told TechCrunch.

Rose sees a market that’s getting ready to explode and he wants to use the runway this money provides his company to take advantage of that growth. “Now, what we’re finding is that FinTech companies, insurance companies, retailers — all of the more traditional brands — are now realizing they’re in a software business as well. And they’re really trying to build out the tool sets and the expertise to be effective at that. And so the real growth in our market is still right in front of us,” he said.

As CircleCI matures and the market follows suit, a natural question following a Series D investment is when the company might go public, but Rose was not ready to commit to anything yet. “We come at it from the perspective of keeping our heads down trying to build the best business and doing right by our customers. I’m sure at some point along the journey, our investors will be itching for liquidity, but as it stands right now, everyone is really [focussed]. I think what we have found is that the bulk of the market is just starting to arrive,” he said.