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Tesla Autopilot veterans launch company to accelerate self-driving development
After working on Tesla’s Autopilot team for 2.5 years, Andrew Kouri and Erik Reed decided to start their own self-driving, AI-based company rightfully named lvl5. Together with iRobot engineer George Tal, lvl5 aims to develop advanced vision software and HD maps for self-driving cars.
Founded in 2016, lvl5 was incubated at renown Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator and later raised $2 million in seed funding from investor Paul Buchheit, who’s a partner at Y Combinator and creator of Gmail, and Max Altman’s 9Point Ventures.
In just 3 months, lvl5 racked up almost 500,000 miles of US roadway coverage with Payver. (Photo: lvl5)
“Working with lvl5’s founders while they were at Y Combinator, it was clear they have unmatched expertise in computer vision, which is the secret sauce of their solution,” said Buchheit. “I have no doubt this is the team to make self-driving a reality in the near term.”
At the center of lvl5’s technology is their computer vision algorithms. Founder and CTO George Tall previously specialized in computer vision technology at iRobot. In addition to Tall’s experience at iRobot, Kouri and Reed’s experience at Tesla undoubtedly left them with unparalleled expertise in computer vision.
Instead of turning to expensive LiDAR technology, lvl5’s computer vision analyzes its environment for stoplights, signs, potholes, and other objects. The system can be accurate to 10cm, a notable measure considering it’s derived from simple cameras and smartphones. In comparison, LiDAR systems can cost over $80,000 but are accurate to 3cm.
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- Each purple trace through the intersection contributes to building the 3D map from a 2D image. For each frame, lvl5’s computer vision technology computes the position of the vehicle relative to other objects in the intersection and create a point cloud that resembles the output from LiDAR. Each white sideways “pyramid” represents the location of a captured frame in the video trace. (Photo: lvl5)
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- This image is taken from one of lvl5’s neural nets, which is designed to draw a box around the position of traffic lights in an image. (Photo: lvl5)
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- With only two trips through this intersection, lvl5 can start to extract semantic features such as a stop sign. (Photo: lvl5)
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- The three founders of lvl5 in front of their SF home. Left to right: Erik Reed, Andrew Kouri, George Tall (Photo: Lvl5)
So how will lvl5 map roadways in the world using their computer vision technology? Smartphones. Well, for now at least. The company has released an app called Payver that allows anyone’s smartphone to collect data while driving and get paid between $.01-$.05 per mile, depending on a number of factors. Users of the app place their phone in a mount on their dashboard and let the app gather driving data.
The data is sent to lvl5’s central hub and processed by their computer vision technology. “Lvl5 is solving one of the biggest obstacles to widespread availability of self-driving technology,” said Max Altman, one of lvl5’s seed round investors and partner at 9Point Ventures. “Without accurate and efficient HD mapping, as well as the computer vision software that enables it, self-driving vehicles will take much longer to reach mass-market. This will delay everything from safer roads to efficient delivery services.”
GIF: lvl5
“We have to make self-driving available worldwide – not just in California,” Co-Founder and CEO Andrew Kouri said in a company statement. “Our approach, which combines computer vision software, crowdsourcing and widely available, affordable hardware, means our technology is accessible and will make self-driving a reality today, rather than five years from now.”
The company has already established pilot programs with major automakers and both Uber and Lyft. Companies will pay lvl5 an initial fee to use the maps, along with a monthly subscription to keep the maps continuously updated. “Through its OEM-agnostic approach, lvl5 will be able to collect significant amounts of mapping data from millions of cars in order to scale the technology for the benefit of drivers and pedestrians around the world,” the company’s press release states.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
Elon Musk says Grok Bot can manage your finances through linked bank and investment accounts.
Grok Bot now wants access to your wallet, with SpaceXAI rolling out a new Finance integration for its agent platform that lets users link bank, credit card and investment accounts thereby letting their Bots help manage spending, investments and more. Elon Musk amplified the announcement on X with a short endorsement, “Grok Bot can manage your finances.”
The feature builds on two earlier steps. In early September, Grok gained the ability to answer questions about spending, savings, investments and cash flow using accounts connected through Plaid, starting with users in the U.S. Before that, on August 28, SpaceXAI let Grok Bot buy things online through Link, with users approving every spend request and the Bot receiving a single use card for each payment.
Musk has already shown how far he wants users to push it. In late August, when Tesla investor account Teslaconomics said he was weighing whether to give Grok Bot access to his bank accounts, Musk replied, “Try it out. If Grok Bot messes up, we will make you whole.” That promise goes beyond SpaceXAI’s consumer terms, which make users responsible for what their agents do and generally cap the company’s liability at the greater of fees paid or $100. SpaceXAI’s own documentation recommends requiring approval for purchases and financial transfers.
For Tesla owners, the update lands five days after Tesla brought Grok Bot into its vehicles, letting drivers hand off errands by voice while FSD (Supervised) handles the road. Bot access inside the car is currently limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, though Connectors are open to anyone signed into Grok. With Finance linked, a driver could ask for a spending summary or a check on upcoming bills during the commute.
Grok’s role in the car has grown quickly since Tesla’s Summer Update let it control cabin features by voice. We have been using Grok Bot in our own Tesla for several weeks, and here’s how our latest test went.
Elon Musk
SpaceX just got the green light Starship has waited years for
The FAA has cleared Starship Flight 14, setting up SpaceX’s first orbital attempt on Monday.
SpaceX has cleared the last regulatory hurdle standing between Starship and its first trip to orbit. The Federal Aviation Administration issued the launch license for Starship Flight 14 late Saturday, keeping the mission on track for liftoff Monday, September 28, from Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas.
The 75 minute launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. Central, and Boca Chica Beach closures are also scheduled for September 29 and 30 as backup dates. This will be Starship’s first revenue generating mission.
The license was the missing piece after SpaceX completed a full wet dress rehearsal with Booster 21 and Ship 41 on September 24. At the time, the company said the flight remained on track pending regulatory approval. Because Flight 14 flies an orbital profile, the FAA had to sign off on a modified license that met its safety, payload and financial responsibility requirements.
Observers combing through the new FAA paperwork also noticed that lightning no longer appears among Starship’s listed launch hazards. If that holds, it matters more for where Starship is headed than for Monday’s attempt. Florida and Louisiana, home to LC-39A and the planned Starbase Louisiana site, see some of the most frequent lightning in the United States.
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
Flight 14 is the mission SpaceX has been building toward for months. Ship 41 will carry 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the first operational V3 units to be deployed, and attempt roughly six orbits at about 275 kilometers over a flight lasting just under 10 hours. SpaceX says the ship will only perform its orbital insertion burn after flight controllers confirm enough hardware redundancy remains for the deorbit burn at the end of the mission. Ship 41 is targeting a splashdown in the Pacific west of Chile, while Super Heavy will return to the Gulf of Mexico.
The date carries some symbolism as well. A Monday launch would come 10 years and one day after Elon Musk first presented the Interplanetary Transport System, the design that became Starship, at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.
SpaceX has not announced what comes next, but air traffic planning slides reported this week, list Flight 15 no earlier than October 19 and a first Starship launch from LC-39A in Florida no earlier than October 30. Both dates depend on how Monday goes.
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SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
Elon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
SpaceX just got the green light Starship has waited years for
