This startup has a different take on driverless cars. Now it’s launching in the U.S.
Vay operates what’s called a “teledriving” service, where a car is driven remotely by a human rather than by a computer.
Vay
German startup Vay on Wednesday launched its so-called “teledriving” solution in the U.S. for the first time, putting the company into direct competition with more richly funded and valuable American firms in the mobility technology space.
The company, which has so far received $110 million in funding from investors including Swedish investment giant Kinnevik, U.S. fund Coatue and French private equity fund Eurazeo, said its new service is now live in Nevada, Las Vegas.
Vay’s service will enable people to get cars delivered to them directly by drivers in remote spaces operated by Vay. When they’re done with the trip, they can choose in Vay’s app to let one of the company’s teledrivers take over, and then park the car. The car is then driven back by Vay’s teledriver.
The company has already conducted tests on public roads in Europe and the U.S. with remote drivers and no one behind the wheel. It has worked to get the tech past regulators on either side of the Atlantic.
Vay, for its part, says that its service is designed with safety in mind and that drivers have to take rigorous tests and evaluations before they are deemed appropriate to become a teledriver on its network.
“We develop our teledrive technology in order to fulfill applicable safety requirements and to provide customers a reliable mobility service,” Thomas von der Ohe, Vay’s CEO and co-founder, told CNBC.
“With teledriving, a human is in charge. This allows us to handle complex maneuvres such as unprotected left turns, emergency situations and road works based on human perception and decision-making ability.”
Von der Ohe added that Vay’s system was built in compliance with local laws, and that the company has made sure authorities in Nevada were on board with its technology before rolling it out.
Different take on Tesla-like self-driving
Vay is much smaller in scale compared with Tesla. But it hopes that its take on “driverless” cars, where the vehicle is driven by an actual driver based in a remote location somewhere else, will take off as demand for alternative mobility options increases.
What Vay offers is a car rental service that lets users order a car, have the car driven to them by one of its qualified drivers who drive the cars out to them remotely, and then take the car to drive it themselves to their intended destination.
The idea is that, once the Vay app user is done with their journey, they can then select in the app for a trained “teledriver” to take over and leave the car parked in a parking space at the end.
Von der Ohe told CNBC he believes the company’s solution is a more effective alternative to the robotaxis companies such as Tesla, Google’s Waymo, and General Motors’ Cruise.
Last year, he said, was a difficult year for the robotaxi industry, with General Motors, a major player in the San Francisco self-driving car scene, slashing spending on its Cruise self-driving unit by 50% after its robotaxis were involved in a number of accidents, including a crash with a fire truck.
“2023 was a tough year for robotaxis,” von der Ohe told CNBC. “Technically, it’s very difficult to operate a robotaxi service. There’s not many companies out there that can do it,” he added, citing Waymo as an a rare example of a company that’s getting autonomous fleets right.
It also doesn’t work out from a cost perspective, von der Ohe added, saying: “If they become available, they have to be priced at Uber prices.”
“Right now, they’re far away from that efficiency in terms of operational costs and capex costs,” he said.
“These are challenges that they have we come at in a completely contrarian way. It’s not we say they’re doing it wrong or we do it better, we just do it different,” he said, adding that Vay will offer a service that’s a lot cheaper than ride-hailing.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang waves to a crowd as he leaves the China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) in Beijing on July 17, 2025.
Jade Gao | Afp | Getty Images
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said there’s a “real possibility” the company brings its advanced Blackwell processor to China as he urges the U.S. government to open up access for American chipmakers.
He also predicted the artificial intelligence market in the world’s second-biggest economy will grow 50% next year.
“The opportunity for us to bring Blackwell to the China market is a real possibility,” Huang said on Wednesday in a call for Nvidia’s latest quarterly results. “We just have to keep advocating the importance of American tech companies to be able to lead and win the AI race, and help make the American tech stack the global standard.”
Huang personally visited the White House in July and August to secure export licenses for Nvidia’s current-generation chip for Chinese AI, called the H20. In August, the White House announced that President Donald Trump and Huang had struck a deal in which Nvidia would receive export licenses in exchange for 15% of China sales of the H20 going to the U.S. government.
After the meeting, Trump said he was open to making a deal for Blackwell chips, which is Nvidia’s latest AI technology that currently comprises the majority of its data center revenue.
Huang has said that it is better for Chinese AI developers to use Nvidia’s chips rather than force them to use homegrown Chinese options by preventing exports, which could incentivize the Chinese tech industry to catch up.
If Nvidia were to release a Blackwell chip in China, it could spur a large amount of sales as Chinese AI developers opt for the most powerful chips available. Nvidia would have to modify its Blackwell chips for the U.S. market to make them slower in certain aspects in order to comply with U.S. export regulations.
“The Blackwell is super-duper advanced. I wouldn’t make a deal with that,” Trump said in August, before adding that it was possible to make a deal for a “somewhat enhanced in a negative way” version of Blackwell.
Huang’s bullish comments on Wednesday come after the company reported second-quarter year-over-year revenue growth of 56% to $54 billion, despite not selling a single H20 chip to China during the quarter. Nvidia said it released $180 million in H20 inventory to a customer outside of China, which accounted for $650 million in sales.
Nvidia said it is not counting on any H20 sales in the October quarter as part of its forecast for $54 billion in revenue, but that the company could sell between $2 billion and $5 billion in H20 chips, depending on the geopolitical environment.
“If we had more orders, we can build more,” Nvidia finance chief Colette Kress said on the call with analysts.
Nvidia said that while it had received some licenses after the meeting with Trump, the U.S. government has yet to publish official regulations outlining how its cut of sales will work.
“USG officials have expressed an expectation that the USG will receive 15% of the revenue generated from licensed H20 sales, but to date, the USG has not published a regulation codifying such requirement,” Kress said.
Huang told analysts that China is the second-largest AI market in the world.
“The China market I’ve estimated to be about $50 billion of opportunity for us this year, if we were able to address it with competitive products,” Huang said. “And if it’s $50 billion this year, you would expect it to grow, say, 50% per year.”
Recent reports have indicated that the Chinese government is encouraging AI developers to use homegrown chips over those from Nvidia.
“We’re still waiting on several of the geopolitical issues going back and forth between the governments and the companies trying to determine their purchases and what they want to do,” Kress said.
WATCH: Nvidia sales drop more than 4% as chipmaker says no Q2 H20 sales to China-based customers
Boonchai Wedmakawand | Moment | Getty Images
The founder of the company behind the IRL social media app was charged with defrauding investors of $170 million in the company’s 2021 funding round, the Department of Justice said Wednesday.
A federal grand jury in Oakland federal court indicted Abraham Shafi, 38 of Hawaii, with wire fraud, securities fraud and obstruction in connection with the scheme, the DOJ said.
Shafi was the CEO of Get Together, the parent company of IRL. The company was valued at $1 billion after its 2021 Series C funding round. IRL, which shuttered in June 2023, was a platform for users to organize events and offline activities. It found some traction in 2018, ranking among Apple’s top social apps.
Shafi allegedly spent millions on incentive advertising to boost installs of the app leading up to the Series C while maintaining to investors that the company spent “very little” on getting new users, the DOJ said.
He then concealed the expense by invoicing it to another firm, the DOJ said.
The indictment also alleges that the CEO and his fiancée used investor funds for “luxury hotel stays, luxury clothing, purchases from home furnishing retailers, thousands of dollars for art classes, and hundreds of thousands of dollars for SHAFI’s wedding, including payments for wedding guests’ airfare and luxury hotels.”
Shafi told CNBC in February 2018 that investors backed the company on its potential to compete with Facebook and Snapchat. Investors in IRL included Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and the venture firm Floodgate.
Shafi’s co-founders at IRL included Scott Banister, the first board member of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, among others.
Only Shafi was named in the DOJ indictment. He faces a max of 20 years in prison on each count, the DOJ said.
Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit against Shafi for the same alleged scheme.
“Shafi took advantage of investors’ appetite for investments in the pre-IPO technology space and fraudulently raised approximately $170 million by lying about IRL’s business practices,” Monique Winkler, director of the SEC’s San Francisco Regional Office, said in a release at the time.
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A news ticker outside Fox News headquarters reads: Grand jury votes to indict former President Donald Trump, at the News Corporation building in New York City, U.S., March 31, 2023.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
In less than three days, college football will be showcasing one of its most-highly anticipated week one matchups ever, with top-ranked Texas heading on the road to play reigning national champion and third-ranked Ohio State.
Fox is airing the much-hyped game. YouTube TV subscribers may be out of luck.
Google‘s YouTube said on Monday it may remove channels like Fox Broadcast Network, Fox News and Fox Sports if the company is unable to reach a new agreement with Fox Corp. by 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday. The two sides are still in a standoff, putting YouTube TV customers at risk of missing out on major sporting events and hefty ad dollars in limbo.
For Google, the issue is how much Fox is charging for its content.
“Fox is asking for payments that are far higher than what partners with comparable content offerings receive,” YouTube wrote in its Monday blog post.
YouTube TV has roughly 9.4 million subscribers. Most notably for sports fans, Fox is the home for many upcoming football games, both college and pro. The NFL season begins next week, with Fox set to air games starting on Sunday, Sept. 7
YouTube pays broadcasters like Fox to carry their channels.
In addition to football, Fox shows Major League Baseball games, and the MLB regular season is entering its final stretch. Fox will be airing some playoff games that follow, as well as the World Series, which is scheduled to start in late October.
Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, weighed in on Tuesday.
“Google removing Fox channels from YouTube TV would be a terrible outcome,” he said on X. “Millions of Americans are relying on YouTube to resolve this dispute so they can keep watching the news and sports they want — including this week’s Big Game: Texas @ Ohio State. Get a deal done Google!”
The Texas – Ohio State game has added intrigue as its Arch Manning’s first marquee start as quarterback for the top-ranked Longhorns.
The hefty roster of Fox programs may be enough for sports fans to turn off YouTube TV in favor of other options. One place subscribers could turn to is Fox One, Fox’s standalone streaming service, which just launched last week, ahead of the NFL season. Fox One costs $19.99 per month or $199.99 annually.
The base plan for YouTube TV costs $82.99 per month and includes over 100 live channels and unlimited cloud DVR. If Fox does go offline for an extended period of time, YouTube will give members a $10 credit, the Google company said.
YouTube recently overtook Netflix, which has a market cap of $518 billion, as the top streaming platform in terms of audience engagement.
While YouTube and Fox have set a deadline of Wednesday to reach a deal, it’s common for carriage disputes to result in a deadline extension that would give the parties more time to negotiate.
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