The AI Podcast: Waabi Raises $1B from Uber and VCs – Episode Summary

Date: January 28, 2026
Host: Jayden Schaefer

Episode Overview

This episode spotlights Waabi, a cutting-edge autonomous trucking company, which has recently raised a staggering $1 billion—including a $250 million investment and exclusive partnership with Uber to deploy self-driving robo-taxis and trucks on Uber’s platform. Host Jayden Schaefer discusses Waabi’s unique technology, its competitive advantages, and strategic positioning in the increasingly crowded autonomous vehicle (AV) space, diving into how this move could reshape both trucking and ride-hailing industries.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Waabi’s Landmark Funding and Partnership Deal

Series C Funding: Waabi raised a total of $1 billion—$750 million led by Coachella Ventures, G2 Ventures, and others, plus $250 million from Uber.
[02:00]
Uber Partnership: Waabi’s self-driving system will power over 25,000 robo-taxis exclusively on Uber’s platform, marking Waabi’s move beyond autonomous trucking into ride-hailing.
Concurrent Announcements: Both the funding and partnership were announced simultaneously, which is atypical and sparked industry attention.
Expansion Beyond Trucking: This is Waabi’s first major foray into passenger transport, leveraging its trucking experience to scale into new domains.

"A billion dollars raised is absolutely incredible. A partnership with Uber is incredible... They're deploying about 25,000 or more of Waabi driver-powered robo-taxis. And what's interesting is this is exclusively on Uber's platform."
— Jayden Schaefer [03:10]

2. Waabi’s Unique Technology and Strategy

Generalized AI Architecture: Waabi focuses on creating a single autonomous system that works across multiple vehicle types—passenger cars and trucks.
Capital-Efficient Approach: CEO Raquel Urtasun claims this strategy delivers structural advantages, reducing overhead and complexity.

“Our core technology enables for the first time a single solution that can operate across multiple verticals at scale. It's not about running two programs or maintaining two stacks.”
— Raquel Urtasun, quoted by Jayden Schaefer [05:00]
Wabi World Simulation: Instead of relying heavily on real-world driving data (like Tesla), Waabi uses an advanced simulation environment (“Wabi World”) to train and validate their AI, enabling faster and more human-like reasoning with less data and compute.

"The Waabi driver is essentially trained and validated inside of what is called Waabi World... It's generating edge case scenarios, it’s allowing the system to learn from its mistakes without human intervention."
— Jayden Schaefer [08:28]

3. Industry Context and Competitive Analysis

Past Efforts in AV: Jayden mentions competitors like Waymo and Tesla, noting historical attempts at both trucking and robo-taxis—Waymo exited trucking due to its difficulty.
Uber’s Broader AV Push: Uber launched “Uber AV Labs” to help all autonomous partners—Waabi, Waymo, Nuro, Auroride, WeRide, Momenta—access and collect more real-world training data, creating a community alternative to Tesla's model.
Comparative Funding:
- Aurora Innovations: ~$3.4B raised.
- Kodiak Robotics: ~$448M.
- Waabi now: ~$1.28B after this round.
Waabi’s Go-to-Market: Already piloting commercial trucking (with human operators) in Texas. Planned driverless freight launches have been delayed, but progress continues.
Vehicle Partnerships: Working closely with Volvo and other OEMs to build vehicles with integrated autonomy tech—no retrofits.

"We believe in fully integrated redundant platforms built with OEMs. That's how you create technology that is both safe and truly scalable."
— Raquel Urtasun, quoted by Jayden Schaefer [12:25]

4. Raquel Urtasun’s Full Circle Moment and Leadership

Career Trajectory: Urtasun was previously Chief Scientist at Uber’s AV division (Uber ATG), which was sold to Aurora Innovation in 2020. Now, Uber is a major Waabi partner and investor.
Direct-to-Consumer Autonomous Trucks: Waabi offers shippers the ability to purchase autonomous-ready trucks outright, accelerating adoption.

"She was literally working in Uber, working on this. Uber sells off this kind of autonomous vehicle division to another company. She works there, she starts her own company, and Uber signs a deal with her and gives her $250 million."
— Jayden Schaefer [06:55]

5. Product Roadmap and Scalability

Trucking Pilot: Texas-based pilots with safety drivers ongoing. Fully driverless launches have been postponed, echoing the common industry challenge of safety validation.
Sensor Integration on the Factory Floor: Waabi aims for vertically integrated, redundant safety platforms, collaborating closely with automotive OEMs (including Volvo and Porsche).
Accelerated by Simulation: Waabi’s simulation-first approach allows learning from fewer on-road examples, potentially a huge cost and time saver.

“We don't need massive fleets, enormous data centers, or endless numbers of people and chips.”
— Raquel Urtasun, quoted by Jayden Schaefer [11:25]

6. The Road Ahead

Robo-taxi Market: Still in the “early innings,” with scale yet to come. No details shared yet on which automaker will provide the cars for Uber robo-taxis.
Potential for Robotics Expansion: Urtasun hinted that general robotics might become a future vertical for Waabi.

"We're still in the early innings of robo-taxi deployment. There's a lot more scale to come."
— Raquel Urtasun, quoted by Jayden Schaefer [12:00]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“A billion dollars raised is absolutely incredible. A partnership with Uber is incredible.”
— Jayden Schaefer [03:10]
“Our core technology enables for the first time a single solution that can operate across multiple verticals at scale.”
— Raquel Urtasun [05:00]
“The Waabi driver is essentially trained and validated inside of what is called Waabi World... It's generating edge case scenarios, allowing the system to learn from its mistakes without human intervention.”
— Jayden Schaefer [08:28]
"She was literally working in Uber... sells off this kind of autonomous vehicle division... she starts her own company, and Uber signs a deal with her and gives her $250 million.”
— Jayden Schaefer [06:55]
“We don't need massive fleets, enormous data centers, or endless numbers of people and chips.”
— Raquel Urtasun [11:25]
“We believe in fully integrated redundant platforms built with OEMs. That's how you create technology that is both safe and truly scalable.”
— Raquel Urtasun [12:25]
“We're still in the early innings of robo-taxi deployment. There's a lot more scale to come.”
— Raquel Urtasun [12:00]

Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |------------|-------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:30 | Episode introduction & context | | 02:00 | Breakdown of Waabi’s billion-dollar raise | | 03:10 | Uber partnership and platform exclusivity | | 05:00 | Waabi’s AI-first approach and quote from Raquel Urtasun | | 06:55 | Raquel Urtasun’s background and “full circle” story | | 08:28 | Waabi World simulation environment and tech deep dive | | 11:25 | Capital efficiency and tech differentiation (Urtasun quote) | | 12:00 | “Early innings” of robo-taxi market (Urtasun quote) | | 12:25 | Importance of OEM integration (Urtasun quote) |

Tone and Style

Jayden keeps the episode insightful, accessible, and relatable for all listeners—using real-world analogies and personal anecdotes to demystify technical concepts, maintaining an enthusiastic and inquisitive tone throughout.

Takeaway

Waabi’s $1B funding round and Uber partnership may signal a pivotal shift in autonomous vehicles, leveraging capital-efficient AI trained in world-class simulations and tight OEM integrations. With an underdog strategy focusing on both freight and passenger verticals, Waabi aims to challenge industry titans—potentially redefining how self-driving technology is developed and deployed.

For more updates on AI and autonomous driving, follow The AI Podcast and host Jayden Schaefer.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Whether you're walking barefoot in the snow, escaping for a walk on your lunch break, or trekking halfway across the world for a lush view, it feels good when we unplug and connect to our simpler side. If only our everyday nutrition were that simple. It's time to simplify your wellness routine with Kachava. Getting the nutrition we need from that graveyard of supplements in our cupboards is often overcomplicated. Just two scoops of Kachava's all in One Nutrition Shake and you've got 25 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, greens, adaptogens and so much more. Plus it actually tastes delicious. No fillers, no nonsense, just the good stuff your body craves. So instead of adding to your backstock of supplements that over promise and under deliver, keep it simple with just two scoops that have the highest quality ingredients. Simplify your nutrition@cachava.com and use code news new customers get $20 off an order of two bags or more now through January 31st. That's Kachava K-A C-H-A-V-A.com code news if.

B (1:01)

You'Re the purchasing manager at a manufacturer plant, you know having a trusted partner makes all the difference. That's why hands down, you count on Grainger for auto reordering. With on time restocks, your team will have the cut resistant gloves they need at the start of their shift and you can end your day knowing they've got safety well in hand. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

C (1:30)

Welcome to the podcast. I'm your host Jayden Schaefer. Today on the podcast we're talking about a company called Wabi that has just raised a billion dollars. They partnered with Uber. They're getting into Robo Taxis. It's an autonomous trucking company. So today on the podcast I want to break down how they got into this 750 million dollar over subscribed series C. A lot of other crazy stuff that happened and they also got another $250 million from Uber. We're getting into all of that, how they're able to raise it, what they're doing, why they're different, and what the competitive landscape looks of these autonomous trucking and driving companies. Before we get into it, I wanted to mention if you want to build tools without knowing how to code, I love for you to go check out AI Box AI, my own startup where you can describe any tool or workflow that you do and have it Link together different AI models, input prompts and automatically build you a tool that you can use over and over again to help automate your tasks. In addition, get access to over 40 different AI models if you want to chat with them, like ChatGPT 11 labs, anthropic audio, image, text, tons of amazing models. It's 20 bucks a month, you get access to all of that. So you can go check out AI box AI. All right, let's talk about what's happening with Wabi. Something that's interesting to me with the Wabi story, of course, you know, a billion dollars raised is absolutely incredible. A partnership with Uber is incredible. And I think lots of times you'll see like a partnership happen first and then you go raise the money after. But they kind of did these things, or at least the way they announced them, they happened at the same time. I'm sure there was probably talk that helped to raise the money. But this is essentially a partnership with Uber to deploy self driving cars on their, their ride sharing platform, which is going to make Wabi's first expansion beyond just autonomous trucking. This is what they've kind of been working on. So this is their Series C. It was co led by Coachella Ventures, G2 Ventures, and then you know, that and a bunch of others kind of put in $750 million. And alongside that you have Uber that came in with $250 million. So they did a total of $1 billion. I think that Uber backing that 250 million DOL, deploying about 25,000 or more of Wabi driver powered robo taxis. And what's interesting is this is exclusively on Uber's platform, even though the company didn't share a timeline for, you know, how when they're going to have all of this rolled out. And I think right now when you're looking at it, it looks like a really big bet that Wabi's first, you know, kind of this AI first approach is possibly going to succeed where a lot of others have struggled in this, this is not an easy thing. Scaling a single autonomous driving system across a whole bunch of different vehicle types and then commercial use I think adds a whole nother level of complexity to, to all of this. So there's a bunch of competitors doing this, right? I think everyone knows about Waymo and of course Tesla, Waymo actually previously attempted to operate both robo taxis and autonomous trucking. Before they got out of autonomous trucking altogether, they completely left that industry. So Wabi's founder and CEO is Raquel Ertson. And she said that her company's capital, efficient strategy and generalized AI architecture give it a bit of a structural advantage. This is a direct quote. She said. Our core technology enables for the first time, a single solution that can operate across multiple verticals at scale. It's not about running two programs or maintaining two stacks. This is really interesting because, I mean, technically a car is a car and driving is driving. But if anyone has ever tried to drive a semi truck before, you know that, I mean, this is very different. You have to get a different type of license. These are massive vehicles. The way that it backs up, the way that, you know everything's happening on that truck is very different than a regular car. So, you know, they're saying, look, a car is a car. These are, you know, it's using the exact same system. But we have seen other players like Waymo try to get into both just vehicles and freight and exit the freight. Because it was kind of maybe too risky or too hard or they felt like they could come to market with the cars sooner and maybe Waymo gets into it. But usually when you see a company try something and exit out of it, it just feels like that's not the vertical they're going to go after. So here it appears that this is something they're actually going to attack, which is going to be interesting. This whole partnership is also bringing Yuritsu's career full circle. The CEO, because before founding Wabi, she was actually the chief scientist at Uber's autonomous vehicle division, Uber ATG, which Uber actually sold to Aurora Innovation in 2020. And so she already works with Uber Freight. And now this new agreement, I think, is going to really make that a lot deeper. It's kind of interesting, right? Like, she was literally working in Uber, working on this. Uber sells off this kind of autonomous vehicle division to another company. She works there, she starts her own company, and Uber signs a deal with her and gives her $250 million. So, I mean, you know, obviously this is a problem that Uber's been trying to solve for a long time. They probably felt like they couldn't do it, and then when someone else did, they were willing to give them a big check. So Wabi is now joining a whole bunch of different companies that are doing this and also other ones that are deploying on Uber's platform. So Waymo, Neuro, Avride, Wave, we ride Momenta, all of these are getting onto the Uber platform, and so they're kind of coming alongside them. The deal also is coming at the same time that Uber has launched this new internal group called Uber AV Labs, which is going to let Uber vehicles collect real world data for all of their autonomous partners. So all of these companies that are on the platform also are going to get more data to help train their models to make them better. And it's kind of interesting because Tesla a lot of times kind of talks about how, look, we have like millions of vehicles on the road and this is what's making our AI, you know, autonomous driving system so good, which is true, but it's not like other people can't replicate that because if you have this whole network over on Uber now, Waymo Nervo Averide, you know, we ride Momenta, all of these are also going to be getting data and collecting and sharing and making all of these autonomous riding better as well. So you're going to see kind of everyone else share their data. Tesla seems to be the one that has the most of it. And so it's going to be interesting to see which of these two models win. Unlike a lot of different AV development that is going to rely on a whole bunch of kind of real world data sets, a really massive real world data set. Wabi says that their system is less data hungry. And the way they've done this is actually really fascinating to me. So the Wabi driver is essentially trained and validated inside of what is called Wabi World. This is a closed loop simulate simulation environment that automatically builds digital twins of real environments. So it's, you know, simulating all of the sensors in real time, it's generating edge case scenarios, it's allowing the system to learn from its mistakes without human intervention. So, you know, they kind of have this whole simulated world they've built and the AI is learning to drive inside of it. But the simulated world is, you know, very similar to the real world, which we can do these types of things when we have, you know, technology like Google Maps and Street View and all this other stuff and the technology behind it really, because I don't think Google's licensing that data, but you could go drive a, a car around and get real information and then use that to replicate these kind of digital worlds that it's used to simulate with. So according to yuritsun, this like approach that they're taking is going to make their system and it's going to allow it to reason about its surroundings more like a human driver and generalize from fewer examples than traditional AV systems. Wabi has spent the past four and a half years developing that technology. And they've done it for highways and surface street tracking. Something that's really interesting to me is the fact that, you know, with something like Waymo, which I've driven in Waymos in the past before on phenomenal technology, really cool cars in Phoenix, I would drive around there to get from the airport to my podcast studio all the time. But the problem with Waymos, and I know this will get solved at some point, but Waymos, what I realized when I first did my first Waymo ride was usually it's a 50 minute drive from the airport to my podcast studio and it was 35 minutes. And I was like, what the heck? Why is it taking 35 minutes? And it was because it wouldn't go on the freeway. It was going on back roads. And that's kind of where Waymo was at at the time. And maybe these things are changing, but the freeway, you know, so like we talk about the difference between regular vehicles and semi trucks or, you know, freight now there's also a difference between back roads and freeway. And so it feels like they have to do like Wabi has to do some of the hardest things they had to do freight on freeways. Like right off the bat, these are the two things that they need to do their, their company to be able to do, because that's how you transport freight across the country is over freeways. So I mean, it feels like they have a lot of difficult problems to solve, but it feels like they're solving them. Yuratsu says that Wabi brain already generalizes across vehicle types. She even hinted that robotics could be the company's next vertical, which is really interesting. From kind of the get go, they're collecting and simulating passenger vehicle data alongside the trucking work, which I think shows that robo taxis were kind of always part of the long term road roadmap for them. And that strategy, according to her, has basically allowed Wabi to build a lot faster with a lot less capital than, you know, you know, maybe like some other first generation AV companies. She said, we don't need massive fleets, enormous data centers, or endless numbers of people and chips. So I mean, this could be a unique approach. You saw others fail to, to accomplish this. And if their approach, you know, is really able to do with less data, less compute and less money, this could be a massive competitive advantage that they have coming to the market. So with this current billion dollar round, WABI's total funding is now at about $1.28 billion. They did a $200 million Series B in June of 2024. So if you're just kind of comparing that. Aurora Innovations has raised about $3.4 billion. Kodiak Robotics has raised about $448 million. These are some other competitive competitors in the landscape. So Wabi has already launched a whole bunch of commercial trucking pilots. They're mostly, they're doing this in Texas and they have human drivers in the cab. They've already planned to deploy a full driverless truck on public highways by the end of last year. That was kind of the plan, but their timeline got pushed into somewhere in the next future coming quarters. I think anyone that's been following autonomous driving knows that that kind of deadline push is something that happens. We've seen that a lot with Tesla over the years. And it's essentially because, I mean, you want to be optimistic, but at the same time, if the safety rating isn't there, if it's not perfect, you just can't deploy these systems until it's completely ready. So according to them, they're also working with Volvo to build some purpose built autonomous trucks, which they're, which they showed off last October. Aratsu says that the software is ready, but that the vehicles themselves still need full validation before launch. She's really confident that there's going to be a lot of demand for this. She kind of points to Wabi's direct to consumer model that basically allows shippers to purchase autonomous ready trucks outright. And then combining that with Uber's partnership, she thinks that Wabi can scale really quickly with a highly reliable product. She said, quote, we're still in the early innings of robo taxi deployment. There's a lot more scale to come. She didn't share a lot of details about which automaker they're going to partner with for their Uber Robo taxis. Right, because, you know, it's not like they develop their own car. They usually partner with something, whether that's Volvo or with another company to build the actual vehicle. So we don't know what vehicle is actually going to be used for the Robo taxis, the Uber Robotaxis. She said that the company was planning to follow the same vertically integrated approach it uses in trucking by embedding sensors and autonomy technology directly on the factory floor. So it's not like they buy the vehicles and they retrofit them. They're actually adding all of the sensors, all of the technology on the factory floor with their partner. She said, quote, we believe in fully integrated redundant platforms built with OEMs. That's how you create technology that is both safe and truly scalable. There's you know, a whole bunch of people got in on this round. I was mentioning some at the beginning, but they also had end ventures. Volvo Group, Venture Capital, Porsche Automotive Holdings, BlackRock, BDC Capital, Thrive Venture Fund, there's a bunch of others. But I think it's interesting. I mean, once you start looking at the car companies that are invested in this and the partners, right, A lot of this money is coming from people that are going to make money from this. You see Uber, you see Volvo, you see Porsche, and it gives you an idea of some of the vehicles and manufacturers that they're going to be working with in the future. So this is a fascinating area. I'll keep you up to date on everything with autonomous self driving. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to leave a rating or review wherever you get your podcast. It helps the show a ton. I really appreciate them. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day and I will catch you in the next episode. Also, make sure to check out AI box AI if you want to save money and cancel a dozen of your AI subscriptions, you get them all on one platform for 20 bucks a month. Link in the description okay, I'll see you in the next episode.