Autonomous trucking startup Waabi receives $200 million in funding from Uber, Khosla, and Nvidia.

• Waabi, an autonomous trucking startup, has secured $200 million in an oversubscribed Series B funding round led by Uber and Khosla Ventures.
• Porsche and the venture capital arm of Volvo have joined Nvidia as a new investor in the deal.
• The company plans to launch fully driverless trucks in 2025 and eventually deploy its generative AI in humanoid and warehouse robots.

Waabi, an autonomous trucking startup, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $200 million in an oversubscribed Series B funding round led by Uber and Khosla Ventures. The company's latest funding round also includes Nvidia, a new investor, as well as Porsche and the venture capital arm of Volvo.

Waabi, a Toronto-based firm, has developed a single AI system that can reason like humans and identify problems that human minds can't conceptualize. Its closed-loop simulator, called Waabi World, automatically generates all the situations a self-driving vehicle might encounter in the real world, testing out issues without wasting resources and money building models that need to be driven for millions of miles on roads.

Raquel Urtasun, founder and CEO of Waabi, stated that the system possesses remarkable capabilities to generalize and handle the unknown, is more efficient to train, and its safety can be mathematically validated and verified.

In September, Uber Freight logistics system started working with Waabi's AI-powered software and sensors, known as Waabi Driver, to transport shipments across the U.S. The partnership, which spans over a decade, commenced in Dallas and Houston and will eventually expand to other locations in Texas and beyond.

The trucking industry is a vital component of the U.S. economy, transporting over 70% of freight. However, it faces challenges such as driver shortages, safety concerns, and supply chain inefficiencies. Despite the subsiding of pandemic-related problems, the supply chain remains far from optimal. There is significant potential for optimization through the use of automation and other tech-driven solutions.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced that he is excited to support Raquel's vision through their investment in Waabi, which utilizes cutting-edge generative AI to develop autonomous trucking in the physical world.

As more startups increasingly depend on AI chips, Nvidia's status as a venture investor has significantly increased, leading it to make recent investments in self-driving companies.

Since its founding in 2021, Waabi has raised a total of $280 million in funding through its latest investor round.

In February, Urtasun was named a CNBC Changemaker and announced that the capital will be used to support the deployment of fully driverless, generative AI-powered autonomous trucks in 2025.

Urtasun stated that this funding round provides us with everything we need, both financially and strategically, to launch fully driverless trucks and accelerate our growth in 2025.

Waabi anticipates that its AI technology will be utilized beyond trucking, specifically in humanoid and warehouse robots.