Autonomous vehicle startup Waabi just pulled off one of the biggest funding deals in self-driving history - a combined $1 billion that pairs a $750 million Series C with a $250 million commitment from Uber to deploy 25,000 robotaxis exclusively on its platform. The move marks Waabi's first expansion beyond autonomous trucking and reunites founder Raquel Urtasun with her former employer, where she once served as chief scientist of Uber's now-defunct ATG division.
Waabi just rewrote the playbook for autonomous vehicle funding. The Toronto-based startup closed a monster $1 billion deal that combines traditional venture capital with a strategic deployment partnership, signaling that the self-driving industry is entering a new phase where technology providers and platform operators are betting big together.
The funding breaks down into two pieces: an oversubscribed $750 million Series C co-led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners, plus roughly $250 million in milestone-based capital from Uber to support deploying 25,000 or more robotaxis exclusively on its ride-hailing platform. Other backers include Nvidia's NVentures, Volvo Group Venture Capital, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, BlackRock, and BDC Capital's Thrive Venture Fund.
The deal reunites Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun with Uber, where she previously served as chief scientist at Uber ATG before that division was sold to Aurora Innovation in 2020. "Our incredible core technology really enables, for the first time, a single solution that can do multiple verticals, and they can do them at scale," Urtasun told TechCrunch. "It's not about two programs, two stacks."
That claim puts Waabi on a collision course with industry giants like Waymo, which previously attempted both robotaxis and trucking before shutting down its freight program. The difference, according to Urtasun, is Waabi's capital-efficient AI architecture that can generalize across vehicle types without requiring separate development efforts.
