Waabi

Market position

Waabi describes itself as a leader in Physical AI and positions itself as a late mover in autonomous driving able to reach market with less capital than earlier entrants; investor Vinod Khosla cited this capital efficiency and late-mover advantage. Its January 2026 Series C was reported as the largest single venture round in Canadian history. Reported total funding of roughly $1.28 billion compares with $3.46 billion raised by Aurora Innovation and $448 million by Kodiak Robotics. The company appeared on CNBC's Disruptor 50 list in 2025 (ranked 35) and again in 2026.

A single AI model and stack serving multiple verticals — trucks and robotaxis — rather than separate programs; a simulation-first development and validation approach intended to substitute for accumulating large volumes of real-world miles; reasoning-capable, interpretable models that Waabi says need fewer training examples; and vertical integration with OEMs so sensors and compute are built in from the factory with a fully redundant platform.

Technology

Waabi's platform centres on foundation models that perceive the environment, form interpretable abstractions and reason over them to select actions, which the company contrasts with black-box end-to-end architectures and says yields greater data efficiency and generalization. The second pillar is Waabi World, a high-fidelity closed-loop simulator powered by generative AI that builds digital twins from data, performs near real-time sensor simulation, automatically generates stress-test and safety-critical scenarios, and trains the Waabi Driver to learn from its own mistakes with near-zero domain gap to the real world. Waabi also uses mixed reality testing, and its sensor suite combines lidar, camera and radar. The stack runs on NVIDIA compute.

Go-to-market

Partnerships with OEMs and platform operators, including Volvo Autonomous Solutions for purpose-built autonomous trucks, Uber Freight in trucking, and an exclusive Uber partnership for robotaxi deployment; a direct-to-customer trucking sales model enabled by combined highway and surface-street capability; and commercial pilot runs with large North American shippers in Texas.

Freight shippers, carriers, logistics providers and retailers for autonomous trucking; ride-hailing passengers reached via Uber's platform for robotaxis; truck OEMs and hardware providers as development partners.

Geography

Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with operations in Texas where its trucks run commercial routes on public roads.

History

Waabi was founded in 2021. It unveiled its Waabi World simulator in February 2022. In June 2024 it published its thesis on generative AI moving into the physical world and closed a $200 million Series B. In February 2025 it announced a partnership with Volvo Autonomous Solutions to jointly develop and deploy autonomous transportation solutions; in July 2025 it introduced mixed reality testing; in August 2025 it hired Lior Ron as chief operating officer; in October 2025 it demonstrated autonomous trucking with Volvo at NVIDIA GTC; and in November 2025 it announced surface-street driving capability enabling a direct-to-customer model. In January 2026 it closed a $750 million Series C and announced the Uber robotaxi partnership. In June 2026 it published results on further generalization, and with Volvo Autonomous Solutions won a Collaboration of the Year award.

Risks & controversies

Waabi's fully driverless truck launch on public highways, planned for the end of 2025, was delayed by several quarters pending full validation of the vehicles. The company had not disclosed the vehicle models or robotaxi OEM partner at the time of the Series C, and no timeline was provided for the 25,000-vehicle Uber deployment. Both of its target markets are competitive: trucking rivals include Aurora, Kodiak AI, Bot Auto and Tesla, while robotaxi competitors include Waymo, Nuro, WeRide, Tesla, Rivian and Chinese manufacturers; Waymo previously shut down its own freight program after pursuing both verticals.