Self-driving truck startup Waabi just dropped the gauntlet in the autonomous trucking wars. At TechCrunch Disrupt, the company unveiled its production-ready Volvo VNL Autonomous truck - and CEO Raquel Urtasun made it clear they're gunning to be the first to run truly driverless commercial operations, a not-so-subtle jab at rival Aurora, which added human observers to its trucks after launching earlier this year.
Waabi just fired a warning shot across the bow of the autonomous trucking industry. The Uber and Nvidia-backed startup revealed its production-ready Volvo VNL Autonomous truck at TechCrunch Disrupt, marking the culmination of an eight-month sprint since announcing their partnership with Volvo Autonomous Solutions. But the real news wasn't the truck itself - it was CEO Raquel Urtasun's bold claim that they'll be the first to run truly driverless commercial operations.
"We can drive in generalized surface streets across right now in Texas, and you will be able to see us across the entire U.S. over the next few years," Urtasun told the TechCrunch Disrupt AI stage audience. The comment was a calculated dig at Aurora, which launched commercial service earlier this year but quietly added human observers to their truck cabs weeks later.
The timing couldn't be more pointed. Aurora, which coincidentally also has a deal with Volvo and unveiled their own self-driving truck in May 2024, just announced Tuesday they're expanding operations to El Paso. But while Aurora's trucks run the Dallas-Houston route with human observers on board, Waabi is betting their end-to-end AI approach will eliminate that safety net entirely.
Waabi's secret weapon is their Waabi Driver system - an end-to-end AI model that the company says can scale autonomous driving across different geographies, from highways to surface streets. Unlike traditional approaches that rely on separate systems for perception, planning, and control, Waabi's integrated model handles the entire driving stack through a single AI brain. "Our sensor poles are super lightweight, it's very easy to integrate at the factory line," Urtasun explained, highlighting the practical advantages of their approach.
The partnership with Volvo runs deeper than just technology integration. The Swedish automaker invested in Waabi through its venture arm, Volvo Group Venture Capital, in 2023 and participated in the startup's in 2024. This financial backing gives Waabi manufacturing credibility that many autonomous vehicle startups lack.
