Waabi unveils autonomous truck made in partnership with Volvo

Waabi, a self-driving truck startup backed by Uber and Nvidia, has unveiled the Volvo VNL Autonomous truck, developed in partnership with Volvo. This launch comes eight months after Waabi announced plans to build a custom truck using Volvo’s autonomy platform combined with Waabi’s proprietary software stack. Waabi CEO Raquel Urtasun highlighted the company’s potential to be the first to commercialize fully autonomous trucks without a human safety driver or observer, contrasting with competitor Aurora, which currently operates with a human observer onboard. Waabi’s system, called the Waabi Driver, is an end-to-end AI model designed to enable scalable autonomous driving across various geographies, including highways and surface streets, aiming for broad U.S. deployment in the coming years. The Volvo VNL Autonomous truck integrates Waabi’s technology, including its sensor suite, compute hardware, and software, and is built with redundancies to safely operate without a human driver. Waabi emphasizes the lightweight, factory-integrated sensor poles as a