DEPLOYDatabase

Company

Waabi

avwaabi.ai

Canadian autonomous-trucking company (founded 2021 by Raquel Urtasun, former Uber atg chief scientist and University of Toronto professor).

Track Waabi
Founded
2021
HQ
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Status
Private

CategoryTrucks

Appears inLogistics robots

Funding

$1.0B

Models

1

Deployments

2

Overview

Canadian autonomous-trucking company (founded 2021 by Raquel Urtasun, former Uber atg chief scientist and University of Toronto professor). Builds the Waabi Driver, an end-to-end generative-AI L4 system trained and validated in the Waabi World generative simulator. Targets driverless commercial trucking on the Volvo VNL Autonomous platform; as of early 2026 it still runs with a safety driver (the end-2025 driver-out target was deliberately not met, gated on the purpose-built Volvo truck). In January 2026 it raised about $1B and added a robotaxi lane with Uber.

Reality check

Unfamiliar-route test (company-claimed, Sep 2026)

A truck drove about 300 miles Dallas to San Antonio with no prior route data or practice, a safety driver aboard and no interventions, per Forbes.

Zero-shot to Volvo VNL (company-claimed, Jun 2026)

The Driver, trained on a Peterbilt 579, ran on the Volvo VNL Autonomous with no new data or fine-tuning, per Waabi and FreightWaves.

Verified record

Verified deployments
2 deployments on file
Active incidents
None on file

Key facts

Founder background

Raquel Urtasun was chief scientist at Uber ATG and is linked to the University of Toronto and the Vector Institute.

Uber milestone funding (Jan 2026)

The $750M Series C came with up to $250M more from Uber tied to milestones.

Approach

Generative-AI, simulation-first: the end-to-end L4 Waabi Driver is trained and validated in Waabi World, with the Copilot4D world model.

Driverless status (early 2026)

Not driver-out; a safety driver is still aboard. The end-2025 driverless target was not met, pending validation of the Volvo VNL Autonomous.

COO (Aug 2025)

Lior Ron, formerly of Uber Freight, joined as COO.

Business lines (Jan 2026)

Trucking is the core; a robotaxi lane was added via Uber.

Lancaster TX terminal (verified, Apr 2024)

An 8-acre autonomous trucking terminal in Lancaster, Texas, south of Dallas, on a multiyear lease.

Data & sources

Press releases

3

News coverage

8

Web sources

7

18 sources backing this record.View all →

Models (1)

View all models →

Current platform

Waabi Driver Autonomous Truck

The Waabi Driver Autonomous Truck is the autonomous heavy-truck product of Waabi, recorded in the truck form factor as the Waabi Driver generative-AI virtual driver running on a truck platform. Made by Waabi, founded in 2021 in Toronto and led by chief executive Raquel Urtasun, the former chief scientist of Uber's ATG self-driving unit, it is genuinely AI-primary: a single end-to-end generative-AI model, the Waabi Driver, that the truck cannot drive without, trained and validated in the Waabi World generative-AI closed-loop simulator and running on NVIDIA DRIVE Thor compute. The current go-forward platform is the Volvo VNL Autonomous, Volvo's purpose-built, redundancy-equipped tractor into which the Waabi Driver is vertically integrated, following a partnership announced in February 2025 and the truck's unveiling on October 28, 2025; this is distinct from the registry's separate Volvo VNL Autonomous entry for Volvo's own program. Waabi has run commercial freight on the roughly 385-kilometer Dallas-Houston lane with Uber Freight under a ten-year deployment commitment, but the load-bearing fact is that every run is safety-driver-supervised: Waabi's defining fully-driverless target was the end of 2025, and it was missed, slipping into 2026 and beyond pending validation of the Volvo VNL Autonomous platform, so the registry records the maturity as pilot and does not assert that driverless operation has been achieved. The differentiator claim of interpretable and verifiable AI safety is Waabi's own and is recorded as a claim. On funding, Waabi raised a $200 million Series B in June 2024 and a $750 million Series C in January 2026, co-led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners with NVIDIA, Volvo, and Porsche, plus a roughly $250 million milestone commitment from Uber tied to a deal to deploy at least 25,000 autonomous vehicles, as the company expanded beyond trucking into robotaxis. Named shippers beyond Uber Freight are not verified, and Waabi's safety-driver-supervised Dallas-Houston running should not be conflated with Aurora's separate driverless operations on the same corridor.

truckView model →

Partnerships

Every company Waabi has built with, alongside the ones only announced in a press release.

6 total3 operating3 just announced

Most-frequent partners

  1. 1Uber2× joint35 total
  2. 2Volvo Autonomous Solutions2× joint6 total
  3. 3Khosla Ventures1× joint1 total
  4. 4NVIDIA1× joint119 total
  5. 5Porsche1× joint1 total
  6. 6Uber1× joint

Most recent

  1. Waabi x Uber2026-01-28
    with Uberoperating
  2. Waabi x Uber Robotaxi2026-01-28
    with Uberjust announced
  3. Waabi x Volvo Autonomous Solutions2025-02-11
    with Volvo Autonomous Solutionsoperating
  4. Volvo Autonomous Solutions x Waabi2025-02-03
    with Volvo Autonomous Solutionsjust announced
  5. Waabi Series B (2024)2024-06-18
    with NVIDIAoperating

Relationships

UUberDeployerVVolvo Autonomous SolutionsCo-developerNNVIDIAInvestorUUberInvestorKKhosla VenturesInvestorPPorscheInvestorVVolvo Group Venture CapitalInvestorUUber FreightCo-developerGG2 Venture PartnersInvestorNNVentures (NVIDIA)Investor

Claims ledger

Public, dated claims by Waabi, each tracked against the evidence. Status is a DEPLOY assessment from primary sources: verified means an independent source confirms it; contradicted means one refutes it; open means the outcome is not yet determinable. Every entry keeps its verbatim quote and source so you can check the call yourself.

Claim Integrity: 100% (2 of 2 resolved claims verified; 3 tracked)
  • OpenTimeline · claimed 2026-01-01 · deadline 2027-03-31
    “Driverless on-highway by Q1 2027, 300+ autonomous trucks by end of 2027, ~$3B revenue ambition within five years”

    Waabi has a partnership with Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Uber Freight for autonomous trucking. Driverless target is Q1 2027 — 8 months from now. No driverless operations confirmed as of July 2026. 300+ trucks and $3B revenue are aspirational targets. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/raquel-urtasun-298400139_waabis-partnership-with-volvo-autonomous-activity-7471235208181071872-yHPD

    claim sourcestatus evidencecite this claim
  • VerifiedCustomer · claimed 2025-01-01
    “Waabi's partnership with Volvo Autonomous Solutions”

    Correction: this verdict was recorded with the claim date as its effective date. DEPLOY recorded it on 2026-07-09, which is its effective date.

    claim sourcestatus evidencecite this claim
  • VerifiedCustomer · claimed 2025-01-01
    “Waabi and Uber Freight partnership for autonomous trucking”

    Correction: this verdict was recorded with the claim date as its effective date. DEPLOY recorded it on 2026-07-09, which is its effective date.

    claim sourcestatus evidencecite this claim

Disagree with a status? Waabi can submit a correction with evidence and we log the response on the record. Methodology and the full industry ledger live at /stats/claim-integrity.

Current leadership (1)

Founders (1)

See all founders across the registry →

Former / Previously (2)

Safety record

No incidents on record for Waabi.

Only active incidents are counted. Retracted incidents are excluded from this summary but remain reachable at their canonical URLs.

Full safety record: incidents, sourcing, and exposure data →

Operator customers (1)

Brains developed (1)

Recent coverage

Waabi in third-party press

Volvo, Waabi Start Commercial Autonomous Operations in Texas

Oct 13, 2026

Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Waabi launch autonomous freight operations for Warp on Dallas–Houston route

Oct 6, 2026

Waabi takes its autonomous truck pitch beyond truckload

Oct 6, 2026

Peers

88 peers across 1 segment. Every Waabi competitor derived from shared form-factor and application-domain edges.

av(88)

57 companies in this segment · highly_concentrated (HHI 4969.122215850638) · leader Waymo at 6990%

Mentioned on (7)

Registry pages whose text names Waabi.

Robots and products (2)

Autona / earth, Volvo Autonomous Truck