Autolane: The air-traffic controller for robotaxis

The robotaxi boom has returned with the force of déjà vu. Waymo, Zoox and a fresh wave of autonomous-vehicle evangelists are again selling a near-future where no one fetches their own groceries and cars pick up dry cleaning on autopilot.

But before we outsource all the tedium of daily life to driverless fleets, there is an awkward missing layer: where exactly are these vehicles supposed to go?

Palo Alto-based Autolane thinks the industry has been answering that question backwards.

While the giants build the cars and the perception stacks, Autolane is quietly constructing the connective tissue they will all need: precise, orchestrated pickup and drop-off zones that let autonomous vehicles navigate real-world handoffs without chaos.

It now has 7.4 million dollars in new funding and a marquee partner in Simon Property Group, which will use Autolane’s infrastructure to coordinate robotaxi arrivals at shopping centres in Austin and San Francisco.

The plan combines physical cues such as Uber-style stanchions with software that gives autonomous vehicles exact geolocated instructions. It is not glamorous, but as Autolane co-founder and CEO Ben Seidl puts it, “Robotics need precise instructions and precise geolocation… you cannot just put up a white sign with some black letters and hope for the best with 10 different types of robotics coming in.”

Seidl calls Autolane one of the first “application-layer” companies in autonomy: not a model builder, not a car maker, but the traffic conductor sitting between property owners and vehicle operators.

Businesses will integrate Autolane’s APIs so robotaxis know where to arrive, queue and depart. Cities are explicitly not invited; the company is positioning itself as a B2B layer for private-property autonomy rather than a municipal contractor.

The urgency comes from the cracks already showing. Seidl cites the viral Waymo incident at a Chick-fil-A drive-through in Santa Monica, where a robotaxi became trapped in the restaurant’s infamously serpentine lanes.

A single misaligned handoff created a miniature traffic fiasco. Autolane’s pitch is that such scenes will multiply as deployments expand unless someone steps in to choreograph the movement.

Seidl’s conviction came the moment his own Tesla “pretty much flawlessly” drove him around town. It was a shock, he said, a signal that autonomy would reshape logistics, real estate, retail and even where people choose to live and work.

“We are at the beginning of exponential growth,” he said. “Someone has got to bring some order to this chaos, and the chaos is already starting.”