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 founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun. Image Credits:Waabi
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