Waabi, the Toronto-based autonomous vehicle startup, announced Tuesday it has raised $1 billion in combined funding and secured an exclusive partnership with Uber to deploy at least 25,000 robotaxis on the ride-hailing platform. The financing consists of a $750 million oversubscribed Series C round co-led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners, plus an additional $250 million milestone-based investment from Uber tied to robotaxi deployment progress.
The deal represents the largest venture fundraise in Canadian history and marks Waabi's expansion beyond its core autonomous trucking business into passenger vehicles. Founded in 2021 by CEO Raquel Urtasun, a prominent AI researcher who previously led Uber's self-driving unit from 2017 to 2021, Waabi has built its reputation on what it calls Physical AI—a unified artificial intelligence system capable of operating different vehicle types rather than separate platforms for each application.
The Series C round attracted participation from strategic automotive and technology investors including Uber, NVentures (Nvidia's venture capital arm), Volvo Group Venture Capital, and Porsche Automobil Holding. Financial investors include funds managed by BlackRock, HarbourVest Partners, a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Radical Ventures, and Canadian institutions including BDC Capital, Export Development Canada, TELUS Global Ventures, and BMO Global Asset Management. Waabi declined to disclose its post-funding valuation, though December reports suggested the company was targeting a $3 billion valuation.
Waabi's technology differs fundamentally from earlier autonomous vehicle approaches exemplified by Waymo, which relied on extensive hand-coded rules, multiple specialized software systems, and high-definition pre-mapped routes. Instead, Waabi employs end-to-end AI models that learn to drive from vast datasets, with a single model handling perception, navigation, and vehicle control decisions. This architecture represents what industry observers call AV 2.0—second-generation autonomous vehicle technology that achieves greater capability with substantially lower capital requirements.
The company's simulation-first development strategy trains and tests driving behavior in virtual environments before deploying on public roads. This approach enabled Waabi to develop autonomous trucking capabilities across highways and surface streets with far fewer engineers and lower costs than predecessors who spent billions on traditional development. Urtasun emphasized that improvements made for trucking automatically benefit the robotaxi system since both share the same underlying AI brain.
Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, stated that Waabi's technology represents a fundamental leap forward in autonomous vehicle development, demonstrating for the first time how to unlock true scale in real-world deployment. Brook Porter, Partner and Co-Founder at G2 Venture Partners, highlighted that Waabi's simulation-first end-to-end AI dramatically reduces capital needs while accelerating commercial adoption.
The Uber partnership positions Waabi exclusively as the ride-hailing giant's robotaxi technology provider, distinguishing the arrangement from Waymo's approach of operating its own competing consumer app. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi called Waabi's robotaxi expansion an important milestone for both the startup and the broader autonomous vehicle industry.
Waabi currently operates autonomous trucks commercially through Uber Freight on the Dallas-Houston route with safety drivers aboard, though fully driverless operations await Volvo's next-generation truck designed from the ground up for autonomous operation. Neither company disclosed specific timelines for robotaxi deployment, though Urtasun promised rollout would occur "much faster than you had traditionally seen on the robotaxi side."
