Self-driving truck company Waabi raises $1B to expand into robotaxis
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A robot trained to drive an 18-wheeler can now drive a taxi, too, says Waabi — a Canadian autonomous trucking startup that just secured up to $1 billion from investors, including Uber.
Why it matters: Waabi says it's the first company to develop a shared AI "brain" that can operate both trucks and robotaxis — and eventually, other types of physical AI such as drones, warehouse robotics and humanoids.
- "It's obvious that the physical AI moment is here," Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun tells Axios. "Autonomy is the first application where scale is going to happen."
Driving the news: The funding includes $750 million in a Series C round, plus a $250 million milestone-based commitment from Uber tied to a robotaxi partnership.
State of play: Uber's backing gives the new entrant instant weight in the race with Waymo, Tesla and overseas rivals to deploy driverless cabs.
- As part of the agreement, Waabi has agreed to deploy at least 25,000 robotaxis powered by its driver system exclusively on Uber's global ride-hailing network.
The Uber effect
Autonomous vehicles are a potential threat to Uber, which abandoned an earlier effort to develop its own self-driving technology in-house.
- Instead, it opted to partner with more than 20 AV companies worldwide to deploy small AV fleets alongside human drivers on its network.
Between the lines: The Waabi deal, and a similar deal with Nuro and Lucid for 20,000 robotaxis, represents an escalation of Uber's strategy.
- By committing to deploy tens of thousands of AVs worldwide, Uber is signaling it plans to strongly defend its ride-hailing turf.
Yes, but: There are many unanswered questions about the Waabi/Uber robotaxi effort.
- Waabi will supply the robot "driver," but it's not clear what vehicles will be used.
In the Nuro-Lucid deal, Uber agreed to buy 20,000 Lucid electric robotaxis over six years and pay Nuro a per-mile licensing fee for its robot driver.
- There is no such vehicle purchase agreement with Waabi yet.
- It's also not known where and when Waabi's robotaxis will be deployed, and what the performance milestones are in order to unlock Uber's funding.
The backstory
Uber has had a stake in Waabi since its founding in 2021 by Urtasun, an AI pioneer who was previously chief scientist for Uber's Advanced Technologies Group.
- Uber sold ATG in 2020 to Aurora Innovation, another AV company working on autonomous trucks.
- Uber now has a stake in both Aurora and Waabi, which has a 10-year deal to autonomously haul cargo on the Uber Freight network.
The intrigue: Waabi's early AV efforts in Texas focused on a hub-to-hub model, in which automated trucks would drive only on the highway and then hand off to a human driver for local delivery.
- But logistics companies complained that system just added costs and friction to their operations.
- So Waabi trained the trucks to master surface streets, too, so they could deliver cargo directly to the customer's final location.
That street-level training, using self-learning AI technology, is what opened the door to urban robotaxis, Urtasun tells Axios.
- "We've been pretty upfront for the last year and a half that our vision was to do more than self-driving trucks. We plan to do physical AI. Now it makes total sense for us to go to robotaxis next. Think about all the potential verticals you can do. This is ripe for scale."
The bottom line: After years of hype, autonomous trucks and robotaxis are leading the way to the next phase of artificial intelligence.
