Waabi has closed an oversubscribed $750 million Series C round co-led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners. The Toronto-based autonomous vehicle company also secured additional milestone-based investment from Uber to support a new partnership deploying robotaxis exclusively on the Uber platform. The funding represents the largest fundraise in Canadian history.
The capital will advance Waabi's Physical AI Platform, accelerate commercial progress in autonomous trucking, and support expansion into the robotaxi market. Founded in 2021 by Raquel Urtasun, the company has moved from industry newcomer to a major player in autonomous vehicle technology in just four years.
The Series C round includes participation from strategic investors such as Uber, NVentures (NVIDIA's venture capital arm), Volvo Group Venture Capital, and Porsche Automobil Holding SE. Financial investors include funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Radical Ventures, HarbourVest Partners, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Linse Capital, and Incharge Capital.
Canadian investors also joined the round, including BDC Capital's Thrive Venture Fund, Export Development Canada, TELUS Global Ventures, and BMO Global Asset Management.
"We invest in the companies that are leading the AI era. Waabi has developed a truly groundbreaking Physical AI platform that represents a fundamental leap forward in how next generation driverless technology is being developed," said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. "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. This breakthrough will define AI for decades to come."
Waabi's Physical AI Platform combines a verifiable end-to-end AI model capable of reasoning with what the company describes as the world's most advanced neural simulator. This approach allows a single AI model to power both autonomous trucks and robotaxis, creating what Waabi calls a "shared brain" across different vehicle types.
The platform generalizes across different form factors, geographies, and environments. Progress made in one application—whether trucking or robotaxis—improves the overall capabilities of the Waabi Driver system across both use cases.
"Waabi is fundamentally changing the trajectory of autonomous transportation. Their simulation-first end-to-end AI is a powerful enabler, accelerating commercial adoption while dramatically reducing capital needs to scale," said Brook Porter, Partner and Co-Founder at G2 Venture Partners. "Waabi is unlocking the potential for autonomy to drive vehicle efficiency and utilization, catalyzing the shift to a more sustainable transportation system."
The new capital will fuel continued development of Waabi's autonomous trucking capabilities and support the company's entry into robotaxis. Waabi's current self-driving technology works across highways and surface streets, enabling what the company describes as a new direct-to-customer model that addresses pain points in the trucking industry.
"Waabi's Physical AI Platform has enabled us to hit an industry-leading pace in the development and commercialization of autonomous trucks over the past few years," said Raquel Urtasun, founder and CEO of Waabi. "Our current self-driving capabilities across highways and generalized surface streets have unlocked a new direct-to-customer model that for the first time solves the pain points of the industry, and provides an unprecedented opportunity to quickly and seamlessly enter the robotaxi market, delivering a truly scalable solution for both verticals."
The company plans to use the funds to expand its engineering team, scale testing operations, and prepare for commercial deployment of robotaxis on Uber's platform.
Waabi was founded in 2021 by Raquel Urtasun, a professor and researcher with expertise in machine learning and computer vision. The company took a different approach than many competitors by emphasizing simulation and AI-driven development over extensive real-world road testing.
The company's Physical AI Platform treats autonomy as an intelligence problem rather than purely an engineering challenge. This simulation-first methodology has allowed Waabi to develop and test scenarios virtually before deploying vehicles on actual roads, potentially reducing development costs and timelines.
Waabi's technology is built on NVIDIA compute infrastructure. "With a trillion miles driven globally each year, self-driving is one of the largest and most important AI opportunities of our time," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "Waabi represents a true breakthrough by treating autonomy as a scalable intelligence problem. Built on NVIDIA compute, Waabi is unlocking real deployment—and we're proud to support them as one of the future giants of AI."
Waabi is exclusively partnering with Uber to deploy robotaxis powered by the Waabi Driver on the Uber platform. As part of this strategic partnership, Uber will invest additional milestone-based capital beyond the Series C to support robotaxi development and deployment.
The partnership aims to deploy 25,000 or more Waabi Driver-powered robotaxis over time, which would represent one of the largest autonomous vehicle deployments in the ridesharing industry. The milestone-based investment structure ties Uber's capital commitments to Waabi's achievement of specific development and deployment targets.
"Waabi's expanded focus on robotaxis marks an important milestone for their team and the AV industry more broadly," said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber. "We're very excited to deepen our partnership with Waabi as they significantly scale their Physical AI Platform and enter a new phase of an already remarkable journey."
Urtasun added: "We are thrilled to partner with the best-in-class ridesharing platform to bring about a safer, more efficient, and sustainable future."
