Northern Michigan is famously scenic, with access to three Great Lakes and ample opportunities to see peak fall foliage.

But its roadways don’t always provide the most direct route. That’s just one of the challenges of delivering healthcare services, according to Tracy Cleveland, VP of supply chain for Munson Healthcare, the region’s largest healthcare system.

“The drives are beautiful at any time of year, but they meander, and so it takes time to get from Point A to Point B,” Cleveland told Tech Brew.

But what if you could skip the roads altogether? That’s what Munson Healthcare is testing out with a program that transports laboratory samples via drone. Eventually, leaders would like to scale it up to serve multiple uses, like delivering prescriptions to patients, and for other healthcare providers to replicate the model.

State strategy: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer earlier this year signed an executive directive promoting advanced aerial mobility, with the state’s Office of Future Mobility and Electrification (OFME) responsible for leading the state’s strategy. The effort aims to support the development and commercialization of drone tech for use cases ranging from delivering packages to moving automotive parts between plants.

Last year, OFME teamed up with the Michigan Department of Transportation’s aeronautics division to establish the Advanced Aerial Mobility Activation grant program, which aims to help build out infrastructure and enable drone deployments. The fund has awarded about $10 million to date.

“It does provide us the opportunity to showcase how we can have diverse applications for drones and advanced air mobility,” Justine Johnson, Michigan’s chief mobility officer and leader of the OFME, told us, “whether that’s in healthcare, whether that’s in public safety, whether that’s in agriculture, whether that’s in defense, this is enabling all of those applications to come to life.”

Keep reading here.—JG

The numbers are in—and they show that the EV market has officially started a new chapter.

Battery-electric vehicles made up just over 5% of new-vehicle retail sales in October, according to JD Power and GlobalData. That’s down more than half from September’s all-time high of nearly 13%.

The drop-off comes after the Sept. 30 expiration of federal tax credits for EVs of up to $7,500, thanks to President Donald Trump’s tax and budget bill. Industry analysts and executives predicted EV sales would fall as soon as the credits went away, and October’s sales numbers back them up.

Ford’s EV sales fell by nearly 25% YoY, while the automaker’s internal combustion engine vehicle sales grew 3.4% and its overall sales rose 1.6%.

Kia’s sales ticked up slightly in October. While the brand’s electrified vehicle sales (which include hybrids) grew by 16%, some all-electric models, including the EV6 and EV9, had lower sales.

Sister brand Hyundai reported a 2% YoY sales decline in October. Sales of the all-electric Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6 models were down.

“Hybrid vehicles led the way in October with a 41% increase, and electrified sales were up 8%,” Randy Parker, Hyundai Motor North America’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “We saw strong EV demand leading up to the expiration of federal tax credits, and while that shift has temporarily disrupted the market, we’re confident it will reset.”

Keep reading here.—JG

Boasting five Fortune 10 companies as customers, Gong is a leading player in the new space of revenue intelligence. An extension of customer relationship management software, revenue intelligence software gives companies more visibility into their customer and sales data and allows them to use AI and other analytics tools to glean insights from it.

Founded in 2015, Gong has grown to around 1,400 employees, CFO Tim Riitters told CFO Brew, and from under $15 million in ARR to “several hundred million.” The company has built far more functionality into Gong’s software, he said, and has expanded across EMEA.

Riitters, who joined Gong as CFO in 2019, is now helping it enjoy the tailwind from the LLM boom. His experience steering the company through periods of both growth and efficiency is instructive for CFOs managing through a volatile economy.

From Google to Gong: Riitters was perhaps born to be in finance. His father is a CPA, and his family owned a business. “I saw the nuts and bolts of the P&L and the balance sheet, and it just became a natural sort of career progression for me,” he said.

Keep reading here.—CV

Base Power offers affordable home batteries for a greener, more reliable future. Discover how this mission started in Texas to reshape energy storage for the everyday consumer.

More focus, less fluff. CollabWORK filters out the noise and delivers jobs that actually match what Tech Brew readers are looking for. Click here to see the full board of curated roles.