Waabi Raises $1 Billion, Moves Into Robotaxis With Uber

Waymo collides with child in Santa Monica, Tesla FSD “Cannonball Run” with zero disengagements, and Obi’s latest robotaxi pricing report

Top Stories of the Week

Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun

Autonomous trucking startup Waabi lands a $750 million round and a $250 million Uber commitment as it expands into robotaxis (link). The deal builds on Waabi’s existing relationship with Uber and formalizes the company’s move beyond autonomous trucking. Waabi was founded by Raquel Urtasun, who previously led Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group.

Urtasun also told Fortune (link) that Waabi will use a single AI model across both trucks and robotaxis, rather than building separate systems for each vehicle type. “The model will be aware which vehicle it’s driving, but it will be the same model,” she said. “Think of us as humans—we are not switching our brain, but we know each vehicle we are driving.” The approach is designed so that improvements made for trucking can carry over to robotaxis, and vice versa.

While Waabi and Uber did not disclose a deployment timeline, Urtasun said the robotaxi rollout would happen “super fast. Much faster than anybody can think,” adding that it would be “much faster than you had traditionally seen on the robotaxi side.”

The funding includes a $750 million Series C led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners, plus up to $250 million in milestone-based capital from Uber tied to the robotaxi deployment. Waabi says this is the largest fundraise in Canadian history.

Urban Autonomy Summit

Our San Francisco Urban Autonomy Summit, presented by Nexar, was a huge success! We had over 600 RSVPs, and it was great to meet a number of TDD readers in person. And thank you to all of our partners who made this event possible.

Next up on the calendar is our flagship event - Curbivore - returning to Downtown LA on April 16 & 17. Bringing together leaders from Uber, Zoox, DoorDash, Starship Robotics and many more - it’s a can’t miss gathering about the future of autonomy, delivery and mobility. Register with code Autonomy25 to save an extra 25%.

Other Stuff

The next 7 cities for Tesla’s Robotaxi service (link).

Related: My first Tesla Robotaxi ride (link). I’ve been skeptical of this product given that there is still a safety driver behind the wheel in California, but I was pleasantly surprised after taking my first ride. There was a long 2 to 3 minute wait coming out of my hotel’s parking lot, while the car tried to turn right and then make a quick left, but the rest of the ride was solid. It also made one abrupt stop, but only because a jaywalker crossed in front of the car. The trip took about 20 minutes and cost $16, compared to roughly $20 for a similar ride with Waymo or Uber. Obviously, this is only one anecdotal data point but I was still impressed with my overall experience.

Robotaxi report card: Waymo is getting more competitive with Uber and Lyft, while Tesla undercuts everyone on price (link, no paywall). Obi — the app that compares real-time prices and pickup times across ride-hailing platforms — just dropped new data comparing robotaxi pricing across Waymo, Tesla, and human-driven Uber and Lyft. The numbers show Tesla Robotaxi is significantly cheaper than Waymo, Uber, and Lyft, though you’ll typically wait longer for a pickup. Waymo’s pricing and ETAs also appear to be improving. They used to run about 30–40% more expensive than Uber and Lyft, but that gap has now narrowed to roughly 12.7% and 27.3%, respectively. You can check out the full report here.

Related: During my time in SF, I found that Tesla Robotaxi was indeed cheaper than both Uber and Waymo, but there were a couple times during high demand, when Robotaxi was not available or had high ETAs.

Waymo probed by National Transportation Safety Board over illegal school bus behavior (link).

Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica (link). According to Waymo, the robotaxi was traveling around 17 mph before braking “hard” and striking the child at approximately 6 mph, after the child suddenly ran into the vehicle’s path from behind a tall SUV. The child sustained minor injuries, and Waymo voluntarily contacted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration the same day. In its statement, Waymo said that based on its analysis, a human driver in the same situation likely would have hit the child at approximately 14 mph, given the limited visibility and short reaction time. Here’s the full statement on the incident from Waymo (link).

A lot of people are upset with TechCrunch for not outright saying Waymo wasn’t at fault. But I’m not sure that’s something we can actually conclude yet. Maybe the AV did react faster than a human would have, but right now we’re mostly taking Waymo at its word.

It’s also not clear what the speed limit was. Seventeen miles per hour sounds reasonable, but I’ve also seen reports that it may have been 15 mph since it was in front of a school. I’m also a little surprised the LiDAR didn’t pick up the child sooner, since that’s supposedly one of its strengths. Waymo has shared videos in the past of the system avoiding similar situations.

Personally, I think some skepticism is healthy here. Waymo may not be at fault, but their explanation basically asks people to trust them. If Waymo really wants to lean into transparency, releasing the video seems like the obvious move. Especially when their own post is titled “A commitment to transparency and road safety”.

Here’s Sean O’Kane’s video response (link).

‘You can fit a good amount of stuff in Cybercab’s trunk. It’s massive for a two-seater vehicle. It would be very practical to use for delivery services..’ (link).

Waymo begins operating at SFO, just in time for Super Bowl (link, no paywall). For now, access is limited to a small group of riders, with plans to gradually open it up to more people over the next few months. In this initial phase, pickups and drop-offs will happen at the SFO Rental Car Center, which you can reach via a short AirTrain ride. Waymo says it plans to expand service to additional airport locations, including the terminals, in the future. I was able to get access to this product while in San Francisco, but it just wasn’t worth it to get dropped off at the rental car center and then take a train to my terminal. I’ll have to try it once they get curbside access like Uber and Lyft :)

A Tesla Actually Drove Itself from Los Angeles to New York (link). Alex Roy and a team of independent autonomy experts just wrapped a Tesla FSD “Cannonball Run” with zero disengagements. They drove 3,081 miles from Redondo Beach in Los Angeles to midtown Manhattan in 58 hours and 22 minutes, averaging about 64 mph in a 2024 Tesla Model S running HW4 and FSD version 14.2.2.3, without a single disengagement.

Tokyo and London are Test-Driving Waymo. New York, Take Notes (link).

NYC rideshare drivers worry Hochul’s robotaxi proposal will kill jobs (link). Nice mix of perspectives in this piece - including my own.

‘Hundreds’ Of Gatik Robot Delivery Trucks Headed For U.S. Roads (link, no paywall). Gatik CEO Gautam Narang just announced that the company has reached $600 million in contracted revenue, and plans to scale its driverless truck fleet from about 10 vehicles today to hundreds by the end of the year. He also noted that these trucks are already operating fully autonomously, with no safety drivers or humans onboard.

‘I made an app to compare Uber, Lyft, Waymo prices’ (link).

What else we’re reading/listening to

Junko’s Tech Probe by Junko Yoshida: Can Computer Drivers Act Like Humans in an Emergency? (link).

Uncharted Territories by Tomas Pueyo: Updated Evidence on Robotaxis (link).

Slow Boring by Matthew Yglesias: The actual barrier to self-driving cars (link).

Big thanks to Tomas and Matthew for linking to TDD in their pieces 🙏

AVs/Humans behaving badly

Video shows Waymo vehicle slam into parked cars in Echo Park (link). The vehicle in the video was being manually driven by a Waymo AV specialist at the time of the crash but it’s unclear why the driver lost control.

‘China’s driverless delivery vans. I could watch this all day’ (link). Here’s part 1 in case you missed it.

‘Waymo In front of a fire hydrant, in a red zone’ (link). I’m not sure this is a big deal but while I was in SF, riding in a robotaxi, I did see a Waymo receiving a parking ticket.

Announcements/Partnerships

Uber launches an ‘AV Labs’ division to gather driving data for robotaxi partners (link).

Despite the name, Uber is not returning to developing its own robotaxis, which it stopped doing after one of its test vehicles killed a pedestrian in 2018. (Uber ultimately sold off the division in 2020 in a complex deal with Aurora.) But it will send its own cars out into cities adorned with sensors to collect data for partners like Waymo, Waabi, Lucid Motors, and others — though no contracts are signed just yet.

AI pioneer Yann LeCun joins Nexar board as mobility artificial intelligence scales (link).

Neat Jobs

Multiple open job opportunities at L-Charge (link).

Senior State Policy and Government Affairs Manager at Zoox (link) via Paul Escobar.

Multiple engineering roles at Waymo, via Colin Braley.

Here’s a full list of the jobs we’ve featured (link).

Cool Rides

While I was in SF, I took my first Tesla and Zoox robotaxis.

‘LADY GAGA WAYMO??’ (link).

My first Tesla and Zoox ‘Cruisin’ down the street in my driverless Zoox!’ (link).

Shout-outs

Big thanks to TDD readers at Virewirx, and to Daniel S and R Heesterman for referring new subscribers. If there’s someone you think would enjoy TDD, feel free to forward this email or use the referral button below, and we’ll make sure to shout out your company.

Until next week :)

-Harry