Waabi, the Toronto-based AI firm constructing software program to allow autonomous driving, has raised $1 billion in new funding and struck a serious partnership with Uber to deploy at the least 25,000 robotaxis on the ride-hailing big’s platform.
The deal marks a big enlargement for Waabi, which till now has centered on autonomous trucking.
The funding consists of a $750 million Series C spherical led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners, plus a further $250 million milestone-based funding from Uber tied to the robotaxi deployment. The firm says it’s the largest fundraise in Canadian historical past.
Other buyers in the Series C embody Uber, NVentures (Nvidia’s enterprise capital arm), Volvo Group Venture Capital, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, BlackRock, Radical Ventures, and a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
Waabi declined to disclose its valuation following the funding spherical. Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail reported in December that the firm was looking for a $3 billion valuation in the Series C spherical.
Waabi additionally declined to say the place its Uber robotaxis would first be deployed or on precisely what timeline they might be rolled out.
Waabi represents a brand new breed of autonomous automobile firm—a part of what some in the business name “AV 2.0.” These firms use end-to-end AI fashions that be taught to drive from huge quantities of information. Often a single AI mannequin handles notion (understanding the place the automobile is on the street and what is occurring round it), navigation (deciding what route to take), and motion (deciding how to flip the steering wheel and whether or not to speed up or brake).
This contrasts with earlier self-driving expertise, such as that initially deployed by Alphabet firm Waymo, which relied on in depth hand-coded guidelines, many alternative software program packages and machine studying fashions, every dealing with a single side of driving, as properly as high-definition maps.
Uber has lately introduced a slew of robotaxi offers with automobile producers and AV 2.0 startups. In lots of these offers, Uber is offering the startups with funding, as it’s doing with Waabi. Earlier this month, Uber introduced a tie-up with Nuro, one other startup constructing software program for self-driving, and Lucid Motors, which goals to put 20,000 Uber robotaxis on the roads, with the first robotaxi deployed this yr.
Alongside that announcement, Uber additionally invested $300 million into Nuro and Lucid. The experience hailing firm additionally has partnerships with self-driving startup Avride for robotaxis in Dallas and a number of different U.S. cities. And it has partnered with Waymo to enable passengers to hail Waymo self-driving automobiles by the Uber app in Austin, Texas, and Atlanta. In 2024, Uber invested in U.Ok. AV 2.0 firm Wayve as a part of a partnership that additionally aimed to take a look at Wayve’s expertise in Ubers in London. Uber additionally has a partnership with the Chinese web big Baidu to take a look at robotaxis in London and a number of different worldwide markets.
Raquel Urtasun, the pc scientist who based Waabi in 2021 and serves as its CEO, beforehand led Uber’s autonomous automobile analysis lab. Uber has been concerned with Waabi since its Series A enterprise funding spherical and already holds a seat on the startup’s board.
Previously, Waabi had been engaged on the software program that might function autonomous vans. In October, it introduced the integration of its AI software program into Volvo’s fleet of autonomous vans, which offer autonomous freight supply companies on highways in Texas and some mining and quarrying websites in Norway and Sweden. Volvo Autonomous additionally has a partnership with Uber’s Uber Freight service.
Currently, Volvo’s vans that use Waabi’s software program are utilizing security drivers in Texas. Urtasun mentioned Waabi determined not to launch absolutely driverless trucking operations till the Volvo platform is absolutely validated—a call she framed as prioritizing security over pace. Volvo has mentioned publicly that full validation is “just quarters away.”
Urtasun advised Fortune that the enlargement to robotaxis is under no circumstances a pivot for Waabi. The firm’s “physical AI platform” can generalize throughout totally different automobile varieties, geographies, and driving situations, and the actual similar AI fashions that drive Waabi’s vans can even energy its robotaxis, she mentioned.
“The model will be aware which vehicle it’s driving, but it will be the same model,” Urtasun mentioned. “Think of us as humans—we are not switching our brain, but we know each vehicle we are driving.”
This method stands in distinction to firms which have developed separate techniques for various automobile varieties. It additionally signifies that enhancements made for trucking profit the robotaxi system, and vice versa.
Although Waabi and Uber didn’t disclose a timeline for the Waabi-powered robotaxi rollout, Urtasun mentioned it will occur “super fast.” “Much faster than anybody can think,” she mentioned. “Much faster than you had traditionally seen on the robotaxi side.”
The robotaxi market is changing into intensely aggressive. Waymo, owned by Google mum or dad Alphabet, has been aggressively increasing past its authentic base in the San Francisco Bay Area. The firm now operates in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta, and has introduced plans to launch in additional than a dozen further U.S. cities in 2026, together with Miami, Dallas, Houston, Detroit, and Washington D.C. It’s additionally planning its first worldwide launches in London and Tokyo.
Tesla, in the meantime, launched a restricted robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, final June utilizing its Full Self-Driving software program. The service initially operated with human security displays in the passenger seat however started providing some absolutely driverless rides in January. Tesla’s method, like Waabi’s, depends on end-to-end AI skilled on digital camera knowledge—although Tesla makes use of a vision-only system with out the lidar sensors most opponents make use of.
Wayve, the British firm that has raised greater than $1.3 billion from buyers together with SoftBank, Microsoft, and Nvidia, can also be pursuing end-to-end AI. But in contrast to Waabi, Wayve has centered totally on passenger automobiles and superior driver-assistance techniques moderately than trucking.
Waymo itself has been experimenting with end-to-end AI fashions and is rebuilding its personal self-driving expertise stack round them, as Fortune reported final yr. But the firm continues to depend on a mixture of lidar, radar, and cameras for business operations.
Waabi’s new funding, in the meantime, will go towards accelerating its business progress in trucking whereas additionally supporting the enlargement into robotaxis, Urtasun mentioned.
Vinod Khosla, founding father of Khosla Ventures, mentioned in a press release that Waabi’s expertise is “a fundamental leap forward” in how driverless expertise is being developed. “Their remarkable progress in autonomous trucking and rapid expansion into robotaxis demonstrates how their technology unlocks for the first time true scale in the real world,” he mentioned.
