Waabi may be best known for its work on Waabi autonomous trucks, but the company’s ambitions stretch far beyond long-haul freight. After four and a half years of development, CEO and founder Raquel Urtasun says the company’s core technology — the Waabi Brain — already generalizes across vehicle types, opening the door to robotaxis and even robotics.
While Waabi has focused publicly on highway and surface-street trucking, Urtasun has made it clear that trucks were never the endgame.
“We’ve always designed Waabi Brain to generalize,” she said, hinting that new verticals could arrive sooner than many expect.
Robotaxis Were Always Part of the Plan
From the company’s earliest days, Waabi quietly collected and simulated passenger car data alongside its trucking datasets — a strong signal that robotaxis were baked into its long-term roadmap.
That strategy, Urtasun argues, is what allows Waabi to move faster and cheaper than competitors still relying on what she calls “AV 1.0” approaches.
“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 massive data centers, extreme energy consumption, or a gazillion of the latest chips.”
This simulation-first, AI-native approach has become a defining differentiator for Waabi autonomous trucks as the broader self-driving industry grapples with ballooning costs.
Funding, Competition, and Market Momentum
The company’s latest deal brings Waabi’s total funding to roughly $1.28 billion, following a $200 million Series B closed in June 2024.
That puts Waabi well behind some rivals in raw capital raised — Aurora Innovation has secured about $3.46 billion, while Kodiak Robotics has raised roughly $448 million — but Urtasun believes efficiency matters more than burn.
In just five years, Waabi has already launched multiple commercial pilots in Texas, operating autonomous trucks with safety drivers in the cab. A fully driverless public-highway launch was originally planned for late last year but has now been pushed to the coming quarters.
According to Urtasun, the delay isn’t due to technical readiness.
“Waabi Driver is ready,” she said, noting that final vehicle validation is the remaining hurdle.
Volvo Partnership and Factory-Built Autonomy
Waabi is working closely with Volvo to build purpose-built autonomous trucks, first unveiled last October at TechCrunch Disrupt. Unlike retrofit-heavy approaches, Waabi believes deep vertical integration is the only path to real scale.
“We believe in vertically integrating with a fully redundant platform from the OEM,” Urtasun said. “That’s how you build safe and truly scalable technology.”
This same factory-first philosophy will likely shape Waabi’s robotaxi rollout, though Urtasun declined to name a specific automaker partner.
Uber, Robotaxis, and What Comes Next
With Uber now an investor and partner, Waabi sees a clear path to rapid market entry — not just for trucks, but for passenger mobility as well.
“There’s still a lot more scale to come,” Urtasun said. “We’re in the first innings of robotaxi deployment.”
Other backers in Waabi’s Series C include NVentures (Nvidia’s VC arm), Volvo Group Venture Capital, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, BlackRock, and BDC Capital’s Thrive Venture Fund — a lineup that underscores confidence in Waabi’s AI-first approach.
If Waabi’s thesis proves correct, Waabi autonomous trucks may soon look like just the opening move in a much larger autonomy and robotics strategy.
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