Waabi raises $1B and expands into robotaxis with Uber

Autonomous vehicle startup Waabi has secured $1 billion in funding and entered a partnership with Uber to deploy self-driving cars on Uber’s ride-hailing platform, marking Waabi’s first move beyond autonomous trucking. The funding includes a $750 million Series C round led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners, plus about $250 million in milestone-based capital from Uber to support deploying over 25,000 Waabi Driver-powered robotaxis exclusively on Uber’s platform. While no timeline was provided for this large-scale deployment, the partnership reflects confidence in Waabi’s AI technology to scale across multiple autonomous driving sectors using a single technology stack, contrasting with competitors like Waymo that have struggled to maintain programs in both trucking and robotaxis. Waabi’s founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun emphasized the company’s capital-efficient, generalizable AI architecture, which enables one solution to handle multiple vehicle types and use cases simultaneously. Waabi’s Waabi Driver is trained and validated using a closed-loop simulator