Automatic Driving Truck startup Waabi has jointly developed and developed autonomous driving trucks in partnership with Volvo's autonomous solution. This is an important milestone to approach commercial launch.
This ball also marks Volvo's second partnership to co -develop a large rig with a startup partner. In May 2024, Volvo cooperated with Aurorinovation to reveal the Volvo VNL autonomous driving truck.
Waabi uses the same truck, but has WAABI technology, such as sensor sweet, Compute, and WAABI driver software.
Raquel Urtasun, the founder and CEO of Waabi, tells TechCrunch: “There is a next -generation AV 2.0 technology. This has a much higher capital efficiency and a much faster approach to the market.”
WAABI is planning to launch a commercial pilot with a truck built in Volvo in Texas over the next few months, and at the end of 2025, an unmanned demonstration on public roads is planned.
According to URTASUN, a completely unmanned commercial launch continues directly between the customer depot from the first day, not through the terminal.
URTASUN, who served as Uber ATG's chief scientist before the release of WAABI in 2021, claims that it has built an AI model that can be inferred as a human opinion, which speeds up commercial development and overall. It becomes a more efficient system. She inferces that AI with better quality needs much less data to understand and react to the world around it.
Waabi depends not only on testing and training automatic driving technology, but also in simulation technology to support truck design for OEM integration. The startup announced the first dedicated truck with sensors, computing and software incorporated in the assembly line in 2022.
In contrast, competitors' Kodiak Robotics has developed an autonomous driving system that includes all redundant hardware and software systems but not connected to a manufacturer. URTASUN is more interested in integrating the WAABI driver into an autonomous driving track at the factory level without interrupting the OEM assembly line.
URTASUN believes this is the best approach to building safe and reliable products.
The partnership between the Waabi and Volvo is based on a strategic investment of automakers to startups through venture arm Volvo Group Venture Capital two years ago. Volvo later participated in WAABI's $ 200 million series B.
VOLVO builds a WAABI truck at a virginian production facility. URTASUN stated that the first “hand” was out of the assembly line in 2025, expecting a timeline for about 2-3 years to reach the volume scale.
Meanwhile, URTASUN stated that capital efficiency was “absolutely essential” to succeed in the industry. She says that the WAABI's “AI-First approach” means that the need for startup capital to reach the unmanned launch is “only a part of what is found in today.” 。
To date, the WAABI has raised $ 282 million for each pitch book data, according to URTASUN that this startup is sufficient to start unmanned operation on public roads. Aurora and Codiac, the main competitors, have a $ 3.46 billion and $ 243 million, respectively.
Aurora is scheduled to start operating unmanned commercial trucks by April, and Codiac sent its first autonomous truck to commercial partners used for the off -road business last month.
“2025 is the year of truck transportation. It's a situation to make it or break it,” said Urtasn. “I think there may be potential integration.”
There are no many players in the game since Embark and Tusimple shut down and Waymo paused the ambition of the autonomous driving truck.
URTASUN answered: Track transport is just the beginning. I'm going to do something more than truck transport, such as Robotaxis and Warehouse Robotics. I am making a very big plan for the company, and we intend to continue to be a completely independent company. “