Waabi Raises $1B from Uber and VCs
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What funding did Waabi secure and what role did Uber play?
Welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Jaden Schaefer. Today on the podcast, we're talking about a company called Wabi that has just raised a billion dollars. They partnered with Uber.
How does Waabi's AI-first approach differ from competitors?
They're getting into robo-taxis. It's an autonomous trucking company. So today on the podcast, I want to break down how they got into this $750 million over... subscribed, Series C, a lot of other crazy stuff that happened. And they also got another $250 million from Uber.
What challenges does Waabi face in the autonomous trucking market?
We're getting into all of that, how they're able to raise it, what they're doing, why they're different, and what the competitive landscape looks like for some of these autonomous trucking and driving companies. Before we get into it, I wanted to mention, if you want to build tools without knowing how to code, I'd love for you to go check out AIbox.ai, my own startup, where you can describe any tool or workflow that you do and have it link together different AI models, input prompts, and automatically build you a tool that you can use over and over again to help automate your tasks. In addition, get access to over 40 different AI models if you want to chat with them, like ChatGPT, 11 Labs, Anthropic.
How does Waabi plan to utilize simulations for its technology?
Audio, image, text, tons of amazing models. It's 20 bucks a month. You get access to all of that. So you can go check out AIbox.ai. All right, let's talk about what's happening with Wabi. Something that's interesting to me with the Wabi story, of course, you know, a billion dollars raised is absolutely incredible. A partnership with Uber is incredible.
What partnerships and collaborations is Waabi pursuing?
And I think lots of times you'll see like a partnership happen first and then you go raise the money after. But they kind of did these things, or at least the way they announced them, that happened at the same time. I'm sure there was probably talk that helped to raise the money. But this is essentially a partnership with Uber to deploy self-driving cars on their ride-sharing platform, which is going to make Wabi's first expansion beyond just autonomous trucking. So they've kind of been working on.
What is the significance of Waabi's roadmap and future plans?
So this is their Series C. It was co-led by Coachella Ventures, G2 Ventures, and then, you know, that and a bunch of others kind of put in $750 million. But And alongside that, you have Uber that came in with $250 million, so they did a total of $1 billion. I think that Uber backing that $250 million is tied to deploying about 25,000 or more of Wabi driver-powered robo-taxis. And what's interesting is this is exclusively on Uber's platform.
How does Waabi's funding compare to other players in the industry?
Even though the company didn't share a timeline for when they're going to have all of this rolled out, And I think right now when you're looking at it, it looks like a really big bet that Wabi's first, you know, kind of this AI first approach is possibly going to succeed where a lot of others have struggled in this. This is not an easy thing. Scaling a single autonomous driving system across a whole bunch of different vehicle types and then commercial use, I think, adds a whole nother level of complexity. to all of this. So there's a bunch of competitors doing this, right? I think everyone knows about Waymo and of course, Tesla.
What are the future implications of Waabi's technology on autonomous driving?
Waymo actually previously attempted to operate both robo taxis and autonomous trucking before they got out of autonomous trucking altogether, they completely left that industry. So Wabi's founder and CEO is Raquel Ertzson, and she said that her company's capital efficient strategy and generalized AI architecture give it a bit of a structural advantage. This is a direct quote. She said, our core technology enables for the first time a single solution that can operate across multiple verticals at scale. It's not about running two programs or maintaining two stacks. This is really interesting because, I mean, technically a car is a car and driving is driving. But if anyone has ever tried to drive a semi truck before, you know that, I mean, this is very different.
You have to get a different type of license. These are massive vehicles. The way that it backs up, the way that, you know, everything's happening on that truck is very different than a regular car.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What funding did Waabi secure and what role did Uber play?
0:00–0:07
2
How does Waabi's AI-first approach differ from competitors?
0:07–0:25
3
What challenges does Waabi face in the autonomous trucking market?
0:25–0:59
4
How does Waabi plan to utilize simulations for its technology?
0:59–1:16
5
What partnerships and collaborations is Waabi pursuing?
1:16–1:41
6
What is the significance of Waabi's roadmap and future plans?
1:41–2:11
7
How does Waabi's funding compare to other players in the industry?
2:11–2:42
8
What are the future implications of Waabi's technology on autonomous driving?
2:42–12:41