# AI-Driven Logistics and Software Velocity Shifts

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-02-13

## Transcript

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Aurora's self-driving trucks can now travel non-stop on a 1,000-mile route between Fort Worth and Phoenix, exceeding what a human driver can legally accomplish.
Now the distance and the time it takes to travel it offers a positive financial implications for Aurora and any other company hoping to commercialize self-driving semi-trucks.
It takes Aurora about 15 hours to carry freight in its driverless trucks on the 1,000-mile journey, according to the company.
Human truck drivers take much, much longer to complete the same distance due to federal regulations that limit how long they can be behind the wheel, for instance.
Truck drivers must stop for a 30-minute break after eight hours and can operate a semi-truck for a maximum of 11 hours at a time, according to federal regulations.
A stat that's won over companies like Hirschbach, an early customer on the Fort Worth to Phoenix route.
Aurora said in a letter to shareholders that it's poised to expand across the Sunbelt of the good old US of A.
Today the company operates driverless trucks, some with a human observer still in the cab on routes between Dallas and Houston, Fort Worth and El Paso, El Paso and Phoenix, Fort Worth and Phoenix, and Laredo and Dallas.
The expansions helped Aurora transition from a developer of autonomous trucks to a full-fledged commercial operator who's earning money on its driverless routes.
Aurora currently operates driverless routes through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, and its future driverless operations plan for Nevada, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, the company said.
For Spotify at least, which shared this week during its fourth quarter earnings call that the best developers at the company have not written a single line of codes since December.
That statement from Spotify co-CEO Gustav Soterstrom came alongside other comments about how the company is using AI to accelerate development.
Of note, Spotify pointed out it shipped more than 50 new features and changes to its streaming app throughout 2025, and most recently, it has rolled out more features like AI-powered prompted playlists, page match for audiobooks, and about this song, which all launched within the past few weeks.
At Spotify, engineers are using an internal system called Honk to speed up coding and product velocity, the company told analysts on the call.
The system allows for things like remote real-time code deployment using generative AI and specifically Clawed code.
As a concrete example, an engineer at Spotify on their morning commute from Slack on their cell phone can tell Claude to fix a bug or add a new feature to the iOS app, Soterstrom said.
He continued, and once Claude finishes that work, the engineer then gets a new version of the app, pushed to them on Slack on their phone so that he can then merge it to production all before they even arrive at the office.
Spotify credited the system in helping to speed up coding and deployment tremendously.
We foresee this not being the end of the line in terms of AI development, just the beginning, Soterstrom said.
The exec also touted Spotify's ability to build a unique data set that other LLMs could not commoditize the way they could other online resources like Wikipedia.
That's because there's not always a factual answer for music-related questions, he said.
After a particularly poor performance on its fourth quarter earnings, Pinterest CEO Bill Reddy attempted to favorably compare the digital pinboarding site to the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT.
It tried to highlight its potential as a unique search destination.
Reddy asserted that the site sees larger search volume than ChatGPT.
According to third-party data, ChatGPT sees 75 billion searches per month, while Pinterest sees 80 billion searches and generates 1.7 billion monthly clicks, he said.
Pinterest and the fourth quarter missed expectations on both revenue and earnings per share, reporting $1.32 billion dollars in revenue versus $1.33 billion dollars expected and earnings per share of 67 cents compared to the 69 cents projected.
Also forecasts that first quarter 2026 sales will come in between $951 million dollars to $971 million dollars and below the $980 million dollars expected.
The company blamed its shortfall on larger advertisers pulling back on spent, particularly in Europe, and a new furniture tariff implemented in October that caused issues within the home category.
Pinterest has long struggled to translate the high usage of its platform into ad dollars, as its users often go to Pinterest to plan and dream, not shop and buy.com.
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