One Waymo Round Is Holding Up an Entire Venture Category

What's New

Strip out three transactions and mobility tech is shrinking, not growing. First half deal value came in at $32.1 billion, a 23% increase over the same period last year, but $16 billion of that arrived in a single Waymo round on February 2, with Saronic and Shield AI supplying most of the rest, according to PitchBook's H1 2026 Mobility Tech Report, published August 25. Deal count fell over the same period, to 218 from 250. Q1 carried $25.6 billion and Q2 delivered $5.4 billion, which is in line with recent quarterly averages. The growth headline is accurate and close to meaningless, because the category is now a small number of very large private positions sitting on top of a funding ladder that has stopped working.

Why It Matters

A category whose headline growth depends on single transactions has a broken funding ladder underneath it, and mobility tech's is close to severed. Pre seed and seed deals accounted for 0.2% of first half deal value and early stage overall just 1.3%, down from 19.5% in 2022. For LPs holding mobility exposure, this means the vintage pipeline that produces the next Waymo is not being funded. For GPs, it means the segment has become a small number of very large private positions with concentrated correlation, which is closer to infrastructure risk than venture risk.

Big Picture Drivers

• Autonomy absorbed the category: Autonomous driving pulled in $20.8 billion in the first half, already exceeding the $18.7 billion recorded for all of 2025, and accounted for 64.8% of total deal value.

• Early stage funding has effectively stopped: Pre seed and seed deals totalled $59.6 million in the first half, down from $959 million for the whole of 2021.

• Electric vehicles lost the narrative: Chinese manufacturers dominate and US policy support has been withdrawn, leaving EV investment weak outside isolated bets such as Slate Auto's $650 million round.

• Defence spending is doing real work: Saronic and Shield AI drove Q1 value, and military drone and aviation demand is the load bearing thesis in advanced air mobility.

• Median round sizes are rising as counts fall: Median seed deal value reached $4.1 million and Series A $14.6 million, against $3.7 million and $10.1 million in 2025, another flight to quality.

• Exits are functioning, quietly: Einride's $1.35 billion reverse merger, UISEE's $1.14 billion IPO and StradVision's $362 million listing all cleared in Q2, largely outside the US.

By The Numbers

• $16 billion in a single Waymo round, roughly half the entire first half deal value for the vertical.

• 64.8% of deal value in autonomous driving, which makes the segment a proxy for the whole category rather than a part of it.

• 0.2% of deal value at pre seed and seed, down from a level that accounted for nearly a fifth of the category as recently as 2022.

• 218 deals against 250, a year earlier, with Q2 falling to 104, the lowest quarterly count in the series.

• $26.6 billion in Q1 against $5.4 billion in Q2, a 79.7% sequential drop that reflects deal timing rather than sentiment.

• 53% return on Lime's IPO, since its listing at the start of Q3, the clearest public market validation the category has had in years.

Key Trends to Watch

• Autonomy funding stays strong and narrow: Robotaxi and autonomous trucking rollouts will keep capital flowing, but to a shrinking list of names as consolidation continues.

• Defence becomes the growth engine: Military spending on drones and related aviation supports advanced air mobility independent of consumer or commercial demand cycles.

• Asian listings set the exit path: Three of the largest Q2 exits listed in China and South Korea, which shifts where mobility value is realised.

• The seed drought compounds: Four to six years of near zero early stage funding produces a gap in Series B and C supply that no amount of late stage capital fixes.

• Micromobility consolidates around one operator: Lime is positioning to roll up the space, and its public currency gives it an advantage no private competitor can match.

The Wrap

Mobility tech is now two distinct markets sharing a label. One is a small set of enormous, AI adjacent private companies attracting capital at infrastructure scale. The other is an early stage ecosystem that has essentially stopped receiving funding. Reporting them as a single vertical produces the 23% growth headline, which is true and almost meaningless. For technology providers, the practical point is that exposure measurement in this category has to run at the position level rather than the sector level, because a portfolio's mobility allocation is increasingly a bet on three companies wearing a diversified label.