Autonomous vehicle startup Waabi has secured $1 billion in funding and expanded into the robotaxi market through a strategic partnership with Uber. This marks Waabi’s first move beyond its initial focus on autonomous trucking, signaling a major step in its ambition to scale across multiple self-driving applications with a single, generalizable AI platform. The funding round consists of a $750 million Series C co-led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners, along with $250 million in milestone-based capital from Uber. This investment will support the deployment of 25,000 or more Waabi Driver-powered robotaxis exclusively on Uber’s ride-hailing platform. While no specific timeline was provided for the rollout, the deal underscores Uber’s growing reliance on external AV partners to expand its self-driving fleet. Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun, who previously served as chief scientist at Uber’s autonomous vehicle division, Uber ATG, sees this partnership as a full-circle moment. Her vision for Waabi centers on a single, scalable AI architecture that can power both trucks and passenger vehicles—something she believes sets the company apart from competitors like Waymo, which previously operated in both spaces before shutting down its robotaxi program. Waabi’s technology is built around a closed-loop simulator called Waabi World, which generates digital twins of real-world environments, simulates sensor data in real time, and creates challenging scenarios to test and improve the Waabi Driver. This system enables the AI to learn from its mistakes without human intervention, allowing it to reason about complex driving situations in a human-like way and adapt with far fewer real-world data points than traditional AV systems. Urtasun emphasized that Waabi’s approach reduces reliance on massive fleets, extensive human labeling, and energy-intensive data centers. “We don’t need the gazillion humans to develop the technology and the large fleets that AV 1.0 needs,” she said. “We don’t need the massive data centers, energy consumption, or a gazillion latest chips.” The company has already launched commercial pilots in Texas with human safety drivers onboard and had planned to debut fully driverless trucks on public highways by the end of last year—though that timeline has been pushed to the next few quarters. Waabi is collaborating with Volvo to build purpose-built autonomous trucks, with the Waabi Driver already ready for deployment, pending final validation. The partnership with Uber complements Waabi’s existing relationship with Uber Freight and aligns with Uber’s newly launched Uber AV Labs, a division dedicated to collecting data from self-driving vehicles to support its AV partners. Waabi’s total funding now stands at approximately $1.28 billion, following a $200 million Series B in June 2024. The company’s investors include Uber, Nvidia’s venture arm NVentures, Volvo Group Venture Capital, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, BlackRock, BDC Capital’s Thrive Venture Fund, and others. Urtasun remains confident in Waabi’s ability to scale quickly, citing strong demand from shippers through its direct-to-consumer model. She believes the company’s vertically integrated approach—building its sensors and software directly into vehicles at the factory—will deliver safer, more reliable, and scalable technology. “We’re still in the first innings of deployment of robotaxis,” she said. “There’s a lot more scale to come.”