Robot Trucker Waabi Wades Into Robotaxi Battle With Billion Dollar Raise

There’s a new competitor in the war for robotaxi supremacy and it’s an unlikely one: Waabi, a Canadian self-driving truck startup created by AI scientist Raquel Urtasan. The company says it’s raised up to $1 billion from venture firms and Uber to help commercialize its robotic big rig business and fund a surprise foray into the robotaxi market currently led by Alphabet’s Waymo.

The Toronto-based company, which is supplying autonomous-driving software to Volvo to deploy large numbers of robot semis in the U.S., will also work exclusively with Uber to put tens of thousands of robotaxis on its ridehail platform, powered by its tech, Urtasan told Forbes. She declined to say when vehicles operated by the “Waabi Driver” would hit the road and which carmaker will produce them.

“Uber is the largest ride-sharing network globally, so that enables an incredible market for us to enter,” said CEO Urtasan, formerly chief scientist for Uber’s in-house self-driving car unit, Uber ATG. “But it [helps] that we are deploying a minimum of 25,000 robots on the Uber network.”

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Putting at least 25,000 robotaxis into service would be a huge increase for that market, given that Waymo, which operates in six U.S. cities and urban regions, currently books about half a million paid rides a week with a total fleet of fewer than 3,000 electric vehicles. Though Urtasan has said in the past that Waabi was looking to expand its driverless tech beyond commercial trucking, this is the first time she’s confirmed a specific plan to do so.

Swedish truckmaker Volvo, which has been a Waabi investor since 2023 and participated in the latest funding round, is testing the company’s tech and will be deploying it soon. “What they have said publicly is that it’s quarters away,” she said. “And that will be a first in the industry. Truly a scalable platform and commercial operations.”

The new funding includes about $750 million from backers such as Khosla Ventures, G2 Venture Partners, Volvo Group and Porsche, as well as the $250 million “milestone-based” future investment from Uber for robotaxi tech, the company said. Excluding the Uber funds, Waabi – named after an Ojibwe word for “she has vision” – has raised more than $1 billion since Urtasan founded it in 2021. The new round is the largest for a tech startup in Canadian history, she and the company said, declining to provide a current valuation for the closely held startup.

Urtasan has described Waabi as a second-wave, pure AI autonomous tech developer that’s focused on creating driving software modeled after the human brain. And unlike Tesla’s Elon Musk, who uses cheap digital cameras as the primary sensor for the company’s subscription-based “Full Self-Driving” system, Waabi’s driverless trucks use laser lidar and radar, in addition to multiple cameras.

“We invest in the companies that are leading the AI era,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. “Waabi has developed a truly groundbreaking Physical AI platform that represents a fundamental leap forward in how next-generation driverless technology is being developed.”

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