Announcement: Ride AI 2026 - It's Time to Market

“Why aren’t we all talking about this all the time every day? This is going to completely change the world and eliminate a giant cause of death.” - Acquired Podcast: Google: The AI Company on Waymo, October 2025.

The AI boom continues to make headlines as evidence emerges that LLM breakthroughs are going to cascade through the industrial world. At the same time, a dark cloud hangs over mobility. Pedestrian deaths are at record levels, vehicles are getting more expensive to make, and global supply chain challenges are wreaking havoc on boardrooms. You might think the AI headlines would provide hope, but in walking the corridors of big auto or talking to former DOT heads, you’ll hear a familiar refrain: this wave will crash like the last AV hype cycle.

But what if it doesn’t?

On April 15, 2026, in San Francisco, CA, we’ll focus on the other scenario—the one hiding in plain sight. Autonomous tech has crossed key thresholds. The leaders are out of discovery and into scaling. The safety data is present, and consumers are beginning to feel the future of autonomy in their own cars. Increasingly, the bottleneck is not perception stacks or planning modules; it’s communications, marketing, and ultimately consumer perception that will drive decisions made at the household, municipal, and national levels over the next decade.

Why now: the scale is real (and measurable)

• Robotaxis have hit mainstream scale in multiple U.S. metros. Waymo is providing more than 250,000 paid rides per week across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin. The company has completed over 10 million trips, surpassed 100 million fully driverless miles, and is expanding its service areas now at an accelerated clip.
• Waymo’s safety data isn’t just a headline, it could be a psychological turning point. For the first time, the burden of proof may shift from the machine to the human. Waymo and Swiss Re’s insurance analysis found ~88% fewer property‑damage claims and ~92% fewer bodily‑injury claims per mile vs. human drivers over 25.3M driverless miles; the studies also show large reductions across pedestrian, cyclist, and intersection crash categories. This is the start of transparency the public has been asking for and that the industry needs to make the leap to mainstream.
• Consumer AV is quietly leveling up. Tesla released FSD v14 with robotaxi‑style arrival options (parking garage, curbside, driveway, etc.), emergency‑vehicle yielding, and UI improvements. Crucially, Tesla executives now say overall FSD adoption is in the “teens,” a rare on‑the‑record disclosure from them. Pricing sits at $8k purchase or $99/month in the U.S. These are now marketing levers to pull, not engineering milestones.
• China is scaling and exporting. Baidu’s Apollo Go is operating the world’s largest driverless zone in Wuhan and is pushing expansion outside China via major rideshare platform partnerships. Reports put the global Apollo fleet at 1,000+ fully driverless vehicles with 11+ million rides as of spring 2025.

The paradox: capability ≠ adoption

Despite the presence of Waymos in major metros and a growing feature set in Tesla and Chinese vehicles, most people still say AVs haven’t “arrived.” In AAA’s survey, 66% of U.S. drivers said they’re afraid to ride in a fully self‑driving vehicle; 2025 tracking shows only ~13% would trust riding in one. What people want, they say, are better safety systems that they understand. Translation: the trust gap is now as large as, or even larger than, the technical one.

The macro tailwind: the AI build‑out is here

The AI infrastructure supercycle is shifting from billions to trillions. Analysts now forecast more than $1T of hyperscaler and AI infra capex in 2025–27 alone, with total hyperscaler AI capex reaching ~$2.8T by 2029. Utilities and data‑center operators are racing to meet power demand, and while grid constraints are real, the direction of travel is clear: society is buying more intelligence. This will cascade to mobility, and as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said, everything that moves will be autonomous someday.

The Day

While Noah and I are outsiders to the auto world, we are veteran technology marketers who see AV as the next great field where the intersection of culture and communication will make the difference. We have also assembled a world-class team of AV expert co-hosts alongside us to help structure the rest of the day. The three areas these co-hosts will focus on are:

• The Leaders: Waymo, Tesla, and China—led by robotaxi expert Sophia Tung of the RideAI Newsletter.
• The Ecosystem: Regulators, legacy OEMs & scaling upstarts led by long time mobility journalist and best selling author, Edward Niedermeyer.
• The LLMs: Model advancements, what is happening now, and what is coming—led by Timothy B. Lee of Understanding AI.

There is a great saying by Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub and Head of Meta Super Intelligence: Pessimists sound smart. Optimists make money. We believe we can present a very optimistic view of where mobility is heading and how the challenges ahead require a broader range of talent and resources as we tackle the next significant milestone in mobility.

It’s time to market.

Ride AI 2026 attendance will be limited, please join the waitlist if you are interested in having access to tickets.