Waabi Secures $1B, Partners with Uber for Robotaxis

Autonomous vehicle startup Waabi has announced a monumental $1 billion funding round and a strategic partnership with Uber, signaling its ambitious expansion into the robotaxi market. This move marks Waabi’s first venture beyond its established autonomous trucking operations, with Uber committing to deploy at least 25,000 Waabi Driver-powered robotaxis exclusively on its global ride-hailing platform.

Funding Details and Strategic Expansion

The substantial capital infusion comprises an oversubscribed $750 million Series C round, co-led by prominent venture firms Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners. Complementing this, Uber has pledged approximately $250 million in milestone-based funding, specifically earmarked to support the large-scale deployment of Waabi’s self-driving vehicles. While the companies have not yet disclosed a timeline for this significant rollout, the partnership underscores a mutual belief in Waabi’s advanced AI capabilities.

This collaboration represents a bold bet on Waabi’s unique artificial intelligence technology, which aims to overcome challenges that have hindered other autonomous vehicle developers. Unlike competitors who often pursue separate technology stacks for different verticals, Waabi’s approach focuses on a single, generalizable AI architecture capable of scaling across both robotaxis and trucking.

“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. It’s not about two programs, two stacks.”

Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun emphasized this advantage to TechCrunch, stating, “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. It’s not about two programs, two stacks.”

A Full Circle for Waabi’s CEO

For Urtasun, this partnership brings her career full circle. She previously served as chief scientist at Uber’s autonomous vehicle division, Uber ATG, which was later sold to self-driving trucking firm Aurora Innovation in 2020. The new agreement also builds upon Waabi’s existing collaboration with Uber Freight, further solidifying ties between the two companies.

Uber has been actively forging alliances with various autonomous vehicle companies to integrate self-driving services onto its platform worldwide. Waabi joins a growing roster of partners that includes Waymo, Nuro, Avride, Wayve, WeRide, and Momenta. This strategic move coincides with Uber’s launch of a new division, Uber AV Labs, dedicated to collecting driving data for its autonomous vehicle partners.

Waabi’s Differentiated AI Approach

Waabi’s core innovation lies in its “Waabi Driver” system, which Urtasun claims is less reliant on vast amounts of real-world data compared to traditional autonomous driving systems. The Waabi Driver is rigorously trained, tested, and validated using a sophisticated closed-loop simulator called Waabi World. This simulator automatically constructs digital twins of real-world environments, performs real-time sensor simulations, generates challenging scenarios to stress-test the Waabi Driver, and enables the system to learn from its mistakes autonomously, without human intervention.

Urtasun states that this methodology allows the Waabi Driver to reason about its surroundings much like a human would, selecting optimal maneuvers and generalizing from fewer examples. For over four years, Waabi has applied this technology to develop highway and surface street capabilities for trucks. Crucially, the Waabi Brain was designed from the outset to generalize across different vehicle form factors, with the company consistently collecting and simulating passenger car data alongside its trucking efforts—a clear indication that robotaxis were always part of its long-term vision.

This capital-efficient approach, according to Urtasun, enables Waabi to develop its technology faster and more affordably than many competitors. “We don’t need the gazillion humans to develop the technology and the large fleets that AV 1.0 needs,” Urtasun explained. “We don’t need the massive data centers, energy consumption, or a gazillion latest chips.”

Market Position and Future Outlook

With this latest funding, Waabi’s total capital raised now stands at approximately $1.28 billion, following its Series B round of $200 million in June 2024. This places it in a competitive landscape with other autonomous driving firms like Aurora Innovation, which has raised $3.46 billion, and Kodiak Robotics, with $448 million.

Waabi has already initiated several commercial pilots for its autonomous trucks in Texas, albeit with a human safety driver onboard. While the company had aimed to launch fully driverless trucks on public highways by the end of last year, this rollout has been postponed to the coming quarters. Waabi is also collaborating with Volvo to build purpose-built autonomous trucks, which were unveiled last October at TechCrunch Disrupt. Urtasun confirmed that while the Waabi Driver is ready, the trucks require full validation before launch.

Despite the delays, Urtasun remains optimistic, citing strong demand for Waabi’s trucks through its direct-to-consumer model. She is confident that the Uber partnership will enable Waabi to “quickly penetrate the market and scale with a product that will be very reliable.”

Regarding the Uber robotaxi rollout, Urtasun did not disclose specific details, such as potential automaker partners. However, she indicated that Waabi would follow a similar strategy to its trucking deployment, integrating its sensors and technology directly into vehicles from the factory floor. “We believe in vertically integrating with a fully redundant platform from the OEM,” she stated, emphasizing this as the path to building safe and truly scalable technology.

Other notable investors participating in Waabi’s Series C round include Uber, NVentures (Nvidia’s VC arm), Volvo Group Venture Capital, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, BlackRock, and BDC Capital’s Thrive Venture Fund, among others.