Autonomous vehicle startup Waabi has raised $1 billion and struck a partnership with Uber to deploy self-driving cars on the ride-hailing platform — the company’s first expansion beyond autonomous trucking.
The funding consists of an oversubscribed $750 million Series C round co-led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners and roughly $250 million in milestone-based capital from Uber to support the deployment of 25,000 or more Waabi Driver-powered robotaxis exclusively on its platform. The companies did not provide a timeline for such a large-scale deployment.
The partnership represents a bet that the startup’s AI technology can succeed where others have struggled – scaling across multiple self-driving verticals with a single technology stack. While competitors like Waymo previously attempted both robotaxis and trucking before shutting down its freight program, Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun says her company’s capital-efficient approach and generalizable AI architecture give it a unique advantage to tackle both markets simultaneously.
“Our incredible core technology really enables, for the first time, a single solution that can do multiple verticals, and they can do them at scale,” Urtasun told TechCrunch. “It’s not about two programs, two stacks.”
The tie-up brings Urtasun’s work full circle: she previously served as chief scientist at Uber’s autonomous vehicle division, Uber ATG, which Uber sold to self-driving trucking firm Aurora Innovation in 2020. It also builds on Waabi’s existing partnership with Uber Freight.
Waabi is one of several AV companies that Uber has brought on to deploy self-driving vehicles on its platform globally. Other companies include Waymo, Nuro, Avride, Wayve, WeRide, Momenta, and more.
The tie-up and funding round come as Uber launches a new division called Uber AV Labs that will use its vehicles to collect data for AV partners.
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Waabi isn’t as reliant on data as some, if Urtasun is to be believed. The Waabi Driver is trained, tested, and validated using a closed-loop simulator called Waabi World that automatically builds digital twins of the world from data; performs real-time sensor simulation; manufactures scenarios to stress-test the Waabi Driver; and teaches the Driver to learn from its mistakes without human intervention. The result? Waabi’s Driver can reason about its surroundings as a human would and choose the best maneuver, says Urtasun. This allows the system to generalize and learn from fewer examples than traditional autonomous driving systems.
Waabi has spent the last four and a half years bringing that technology to life for highway and surface street capabilities with trucks, but Urtasun says the Waabi Brain already generalizes to different vehicle form factors – she has even hinted at the company’s next vertical being robotics. From the beginning, the company collected and simulated passenger car data alongside its trucking work, a signal that robotaxis were always part of the long-term plan.
The approach has allowed Waabi to build faster and cheaper than competitors, Urtasun claims.
“We don’t need the gazillion humans to develop the technology and the large fleets that AV 1.0 needs,” Urtasun said. “We don’t need the massive data centers, energy consumption, or a gazillion latest chips.”
The deal brings Waabi’s total funding raised to roughly $1.28 billion after it closed a $200 million Series B in June 2024. Competitors Aurora Innovation and Kodiak Robotics have raised $3.46 billion and $448 million to date, respectively, through a combination of venture capital and public-market proceeds.
In just five years, Waabi has launched several commercial pilots (with a human driver in the front seat) in Texas. The company had planned to launch a fully driverless truck on public highways by the end of last year, but the rollout has been delayed until sometime in the next few quarters, per Urtasun.
Waabi is working with Volvo to build purpose-built autonomous trucks, which the company revealed last October at TechCrunch Disrupt. Urtasun says Waabi’s Driver is ready to go, but the trucks still need to be fully validated before launch.
Urtasun’s not worried, though. She says there’s plenty of demand for Waabi’s trucks due to the company’s direct-to-consumer model that enables shippers to buy the outfitted trucks directly, and she’s confident that with the Uber partnership, Waabi will be able to “quickly penetrate the market and scale with a product that will be very reliable.”
“We’re still in the first innings of deployment of robotaxis,” she said. “There’s a lot more scale to come.”
Urtasun wouldn’t share more specifics about the Uber rollout, like what automaker Waabi would partner with. She did say that Waabi would take a similar route to its autonomous trucking rollout by building its sensors and technology into the vehicle from the factory floor.
“We believe in vertically integrating with a fully redundant platform from the OEM,” she said. “That is how you really build safe and truly scalable technology.”
Other investors in Waabi’s Series C include Uber, NVentures (Nvidia’s VC arm), Volvo Group Venture Capital, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, BlackRock, BDC Capital’s Thrive Venture Fund, and others.
Source: techcrunch.com
