Waabi, the Toronto-based autonomous driving startup, didn’t enter the field early—but it entered differently. Founded in 2021 during the height of self-driving hype, it emerged alongside well-funded incumbents yet stood apart with a bold bet on generative A.I. “We had a very contrarian view at the time,” founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun told Observer at Web Summit Vancouver last week. While other companies built costly, rigid systems that required endless road testing, Waabi focused on creating an A.I.-powered platform that could reason like a human and learn at scale. The gamble is starting to pay off: with more than $280 million in funding, the company plans to roll out its first fully driverless long-haul trucks on Texas highways later this year.
Urtasun, 49, grew up in Spain and has spent the past decade in Canada, where she teaches at the University of Toronto. Her fascination with A.I. began early, but her passion for autonomous vehicles took hold about 15 years ago. In 2017, she joined Uber to lead its self-driving division—only to depart a few years later, convinced she could move faster on her own. Sensing a gap in long-haul trucking, a sector strained by driver shortages and grueling hours, she launched Waabi to build what she saw as the next generation of autonomous transport.
“Those jobs are not human, in my opinion,” said Urtasun of long-haul trucking, citing safety issues—especially for female drivers—and the time spent away from families. “People go weeks at a time. They don’t even have access to bathroom showers for many days in a row,” she added.
Waabi, backed by major players like Khosla Ventures, Nvidia and Uber, isn’t promising an overnight industry revolution. Scaling autonomous trucking will take years, Urtasun said, dismissing fears that A.I. will soon replace all human drivers. “Whoever is a truck driver that wants to continue doing this job is going to retire being a truck driver,” she said, adding that A.I. adoption will create new jobs in areas like terminal operations and remote vehicle assistance.
Still, Waabi is moving fast. Its fully driverless trucks are slated to hit Texas roads by the end of this year. Urtasun expects the company’s reach to expand globally, with planned entries into Canada, Europe and Asia.
To help accelerate growth, Waabi has already secured high-profile partnerships. In 2023, it began piloting autonomous trucks with Uber Freight’s carrier network. And earlier this year, it announced a collaboration with Volvo to co-develop and deploy autonomous long-haul vehicles.
Beyond powering its self-driving system, Waabi uses generative A.I. to create simulation software capable of generating entirely new driving scenarios—far beyond what real-world testing alone can offer. “Think of it as the driving school for training the system,” said Urtasun.
Earlier this year, she called on the industry to be more transparent about the realism of autonomous vehicle simulators and revealed that Waabi’s own system has a 99.7 percent success rate in mimicking real-world conditions. “As an industry, we need to build trust—whether it’s the public or regulators—and we need to really show what our systems can and can’t do,” she said.
Waabi is also unusual in staying rooted in Toronto while many of its competitors have gravitated to the U.S. Urtasun, who lives in the city, said the decision was deliberate, citing Canada’s strong A.I. ecosystem and academic history. Still, Waabi builds its trucks and hardware in the U.S., which has helped it largely sidestep the Trump administration’s new auto tariffs—though, like other manufacturers, it won’t be immune from levies on vehicle components. So far, Urtasun said, the impact has been in line with what others in the industry are experiencing.
In the long run, Waabi’s technology could extend well beyond driverless trucking, according to Urtasun. As robotics and A.I. evolve, she sees potential applications in everything from supporting aging populations to transforming transportation and enabling large-scale automation. “If you fast forward ten years, there’s going to be robots everywhere,” she said.