Board: [DoveNet] Tech Talk Subject: Waymo cuts Uber ties ¿, A From: TLDR Hardware Date: Fri Nov 06, 2026 14:18 To: tldrnewsletter@synchro.net Subject: Waymo cuts Uber ties ¿, Agility lists on NASDAQ ¿, Texas data centers at risk ¿ Waymo will move rides in Austin and Atlanta to its own app in January 2028, ahead of the Uber deal's May 2028 expiry. Riders on Uber never knew Sign Up [1] |Advertise [2]|View Online [3] TLDR TLDR HARDWARE 2026-11-06 ¿ HEADLINES AND LAUNCHES WAYMO CONFIRMS IT WILL LEAVE UBER IN AUSTIN AND ATLANTA IN JANUARY 2028 (1 MINUTE READ) [4] Waymo will move rides in Austin and Atlanta to its own app in January 2028, ahead of the Uber deal's May 2028 expiry. Riders on Uber never knew whether they'd get a robotaxi or a human driver. Waymo wants a direct rider relationship. AGILITY ROBOTICS LISTS ON NASDAQ AS AGLT WITH $1.8M OF REVENUE AND A $138.1M NET LOSS (3 MINUTE READ) [5] Agility begins trading Thursday after merging with Churchill Capital Corp XI, becoming the first US-listed company focused on humanoid robots. The deal values it at roughly $2.5 billion and expects about $465 million in gross proceeds, including $100 million already received. In 2025, it booked $1.8 million of revenue, over half from five robots bought by one investor, against a $138.1 million net loss. About $38 million of that was non-cash stock compensation, and it burned $99.8 million in cash. ¿ ENGINEERING AND APPLICATIONS QUALCOMM TO SUPPLY MIMO RADIOS AND BASEBAND FOR STARLINK MOBILE'S TERRESTRIAL 5G NETWORK (2 MINUTE READ) [6] SpaceX has signed a multiyear deal for Qualcomm's Dragonwing infrastructure platforms: the QRU100 radio unit and QDU100 distributed unit, with 64T64R massive MIMO and physical-layer RAN software. They'll go into base stations at what's planned as tens of thousands of US sites, starting in 2027, to complement Starlink's satellite service. Qualcomm calls this its biggest 5G deal yet. BLUE ORIGIN ADDS A BE-7 THIRD STAGE TO NEW GLENN AND UNVEILS THE NORTHSTAR ENGINE (3 MINUTE READ) [7] Northstar is a methalox booster engine that Blue Origin says cuts mass by 30% and parts count by 50% versus the BE-4 while raising thrust from 640,000 to 715,000 lbf, with assembly in under a day. No first-flight date is given, and New Glenn is still recovering from a pad explosion that happened in May. ¿ RESEARCH AND PROTOTYPES FLIP SOFTWARE SUBTRACTS STARLIGHT IN JWST CORONAGRAPH DATA WITH UP TO 15X BETTER SENSITIVITY (3 MINUTE READ) [8] A Northwestern-led team built FLIP, which makes a physics-based digital twin of the telescope's optics and adjusts it until it reproduces the observed starlight, then subtracts that simulated glare. On existing NIRCam data at 4.3 microns, it improved sensitivity up to 15x over the conventional KLIP method and recovered the giant planet 51 Eridani b, which standard processing couldn't separate from residual glare. LUMITAC IS A CAMERA-FREE SIX-AXIS TACTILE SENSOR, 12 MM WIDE AND ABOUT $7 IN PARTS (2 MINUTE READ) [9] LumiTac pairs five photoemitters with five RGBW photoreceivers on opposing circuit boards joined by translucent silicone, so load-driven motion between the layers shifts the internal light field under compression, shear, bending, and torsion. The head is 12 mm across, 4.75 mm thick, under 2 g, and made with about $7 in components. Independent testing gave R² of 0.966 to 0.994, with mean absolute errors of 0.054 to 0.190 N in force and 0.304 to 1.419 mN·m in moment. ¿ MISCELLANEOUS TEXAS GOVERNOR-ELECT HINOJOSA'S DATA CENTER MORATORIUM PLEDGE PUTS 13.3 GW OF ANNOUNCED PROJECTS AT RISK (2 MINUTE READ) [10] Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has pledged to halt all data center approvals until the legislature passes new laws when it meets in January. Outgoing Governor Abbott had already paused new grid connections and ordered an audit. Texas holds about 25% of planned US data center capacity. It is estimated that 13.3 GW of announced projects are at risk. CXMT'S CHAIRMAN TOPS CHINA'S NEWCOMERS AT $13B ON AN UNVERIFIED CLAIM OF A 4F² DRAM BREAKTHROUGH (3 MINUTE READ) [11] CXMT says its 4F² DRAM uses a vertical surrounding gate transistor and builds the memory cells and peripheral circuitry on separate wafers joined by hybrid bonding, which an analyst says could raise density by about 30%. Yields are unknown, and a server product is promised before year-end. The claim cut Samsung and SK Hynix about 13% in a day, even though CXMT holds roughly 10% of DRAM against Samsung's 38%. ¿ QUICK LINKS STARFISH'S FIRST OTTER SERVICING SPACECRAFT IS LOST TO A FAULT-PROTECTION FAULT, ENDING A $15M NASA INSPECTION MISSION (2 MINUTE READ) [12] Starfish's Otter 24C launched October 1, made two-way contact, and downlinked telemetry, then lost contact during commissioning. WALMART ADDS 300 ZIPLINE DRONE DELIVERY SITES, BUILDING ON 2M+ DELIVERIES (2 MINUTE READ) [13] Walmart signed a multi-year deal to add 300 Zipline drone sites. SHIELD SPACE PLANS SWARMS OF UP TO 100 LASER-ARMED CUBESAT INTERCEPTORS, STARTING WITH A 2027 RENDEZVOUS DEMO (4 MINUTE READ) [14] UK startup Shield Space wants carrier-deployed cubesat swarms using lasers, microwaves, or kinetic standoff to defend satellites, even when ground contact is lost, for under £100M per 100. THEA ENERGY AND MIT WILL TEST A FULL-SIZE FLAT SUPERCONDUCTING COIL FOR THE EOS STELLARATOR (3 MINUTE READ) [15] Thea Energy's Eos stellarator uses flat coils instead of hard-to-build 3D magnets. Want to advertise in TLDR? ¿ If your company is interested in reaching an audience of hardware professionals and decision makers, you may want to ADVERTISE WITH US [16]. Want to work at TLDR? ¿ APPLY HERE [17], CREATE YOUR OWN ROLE [18] or send a friend's resume to jobs@tldr.tech and get $1k if we hire them! TLDR is one of INC.'S BEST BOOTSTRAPPED BUSINESSES [19] of 2025. If you have any comments or feedback, just respond to this email! Thanks for reading, Andrew Tan [20], Adi Nikumbh [21], Kshitij Sudan [22], & Kat Scott [23] Manage your subscriptions [24] to our other newsletters on tech, startups, and programming. Or if TLDR Hardware isn't for you, please unsubscribe [25]. Links: ------ [1] https://tldr.tech/hardware?utm_source=tldrhardware [2] https://advertise.tldr.tech/?utm_source=tldrhardware&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=advertisetopnav [3] https://a.tldrnewsletter.com/web-version?ep=1&lc=48ce571c-d4e0-11f0-8279-1f6dc2dca83a&p=bdfed3f0-d9a2-11f1-a0ef-5d063f951c1f&pt=campaign&t=1793974719&s=811a8ce98989a28068e2ecf93905df711700427fe05ba9e8a876b0670061d626 [4] https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/04/waymo-confirms-it-will-split-with-uber-in-january-2028/?utm_source=tldrhardware [5] https://www.businessinsider.com/agility-robotics-heads-to-wall-street-tough-road-to-profit-2026-11?utm_source=tldrhardware [6] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/04/spacex-strikes-deal-with-qualcomm-for-mobile-network-infrastructure.html?utm_source=tldrhardware [7] https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/blue-origin-announces-3rd-stage-for-its-powerful-new-glenn-rocket-and-a-new-engine?utm_source=tldrhardware [8] https://phys.org/news/2026-11-giant-planet-emerges-year-jwst.html?utm_source=tldrhardware [9] https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.05936?utm_source=tldrhardware [10] https://links.tldrnewsletter.com/AF2VNc [11] https://links.tldrnewsletter.com/Fn9clj [12] https://www.geekwire.com/2026/starfish-space-loses-contact-otter-sspicy/?utm_source=tldrhardware [13] https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2026/11/walmart-expands-drone-delivery-network-with-zipline?utm_source=tldrhardware [14] https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/drone-warfare-in-space-swarms-of-autonomous-laser-shooting-cubesats-could-defend-western-satellites-in-orbit?utm_source=tldrhardware [15] https://interestingengineering.com/energy/thea-energy-mit-stellarator-magnet-test?utm_source=tldrhardware [16] https://advertise.tldr.tech/?utm_source=tldrhardware&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=advertisecta [17] https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/tldr.tech [18] https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/tldr.tech/c227b917-a6a4-40ce-8950-d3e165357871 [19] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7401699691039830016/ [20] https://twitter.com/andrewztan [21] https://www.linkedin.com/in/adinikumbh [22] https://www.linkedin.com/in/kshitij-sudan/ [23] https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherineascott/ [24] https://tldr.tech/hardware/manage?email=tldrnewsletter%40synchro.net [25] https://a.tldrnewsletter.com/unsubscribe?ep=1&l=516aef72-d5bc-11ee-9229-6b70acf0ae94&lc=48ce571c-d4e0-11f0-8279-1f6dc2dca83a&p=bdfed3f0-d9a2-11f1-a0ef-5d063f951c1f&pt=campaign&pv=5&spa=1793973670&t=1793974719&s=631c9759ecc4236b46aad2db96a16e8c4499e272fbb802017d5781f7bd34b0f4 --- ■ Synchronet ■ Vertrauen ■ Home of Synchronet ■ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net .