{"id":24719,"date":"2026-02-02T16:03:45","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T16:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/insurance-canada.ca\/?p=84825"},"modified":"2026-02-02T16:03:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T16:03:45","slug":"waabi-secures-cad1-billion-in-new-funding-to-lead-physical-ai-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/2026\/02\/02\/waabi-secures-cad1-billion-in-new-funding-to-lead-physical-ai-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Waabi secures CAD$1 Billion in new funding to lead Physical AI revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cToronto, your <\/span><\/em>Waabi will be arriving shortly.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/h3>\n

Named after the Japanese word for \u201csimple,\u201d Toronto-based autonomous-vehicle startup Waabi just achieved the largest funding round in the history of Canada\u2019s technology sector as it aims to accelerate the development of its physical AI platform, boost efforts to commercialize self-driving trucks, and enter the robotaxi market\u2014via Uber\u2019s platform\u2014with plans to deploy a minimum of 25,000 autonomous vehicles on Uber\u2019s ride-hailing service<\/h4>\n

Toronto, ON (Jan. 28, 2026) \u2013 Waabi, the leader in Physical AI, is pleased to announce it has closed its oversubscribed $750M USD Series C round co-led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners, and secured an additional milestone-based future investment from Uber to support a new partnership to deploy robotaxis powered by the Waabi Driver exclusively on the Uber platform. The funding, the largest fundraise in Canadian history, will fuel the continued advancement of Waabi\u2019s Physical AI Platform, further accelerate the company\u2019s commercial progress in autonomous trucking, and support Waabi\u2019s expansion into robotaxis.<\/p>\n

Founded in 2021, Waabi has quickly ascended from industry upstart to leader in Physical AI. The company\u2019s revolutionary Physical AI Platform enables true scale, generalizing to different form factors, geographies, and environments. Waabi\u2019s Platform combines a verifiable end-to-end AI model capable of reasoning alongside the world\u2019s most advanced neural simulator. This approach enables \u2014 for the first time in the industry \u2014 a shared brain across both autonomous trucks and robotaxis, in which the same AI model powers both applications. Waabi\u2019s breakthrough unlocks a rapid and seamless expansion into robotaxis, while ensuring that progress in both autonomous trucks and robotaxis ultimately improves the Waabi Driver\u2019s overall capabilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWaabi\u2019s Physical AI Platform has enabled us to hit an industry-leading pace in the development and commercialization of autonomous trucks over the past few years,\u201d said Raquel Urtasun<\/strong>, founder and CEO of Waabi. \u201cOur current self-driving capabilities across highways and generalized surface streets have unlocked a new direct-to-customer model that for the first time solves the pain points of the industry, and provides an unprecedented opportunity to quickly and seamlessly enter the robotaxi market, delivering a truly scalable solution for both verticals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waabi\u2019s Series C<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Waabi\u2019s $750M USD Series C round includes participation from global leaders in AI, transportation, and the Canadian ecosystem. In addition to the lead investors, Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners, Waabi\u2019s Series C includes participation from strategic investors, such as Uber, NVentures (NVIDIA\u2019s venture capital arm), Volvo Group Venture Capital, and Porsche Automobil Holding SE, as well as financial investors: funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Radical Ventures, HarbourVest Partners, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (\u201cADIA\u201d), Linse Capital, Incharge Capital, and others. The company\u2019s Series C raise also includes the participation of best-in-class Canadian investors: BDC Capital\u2019s Thrive Venture Fund, Export Development Canada (EDC), TELUS Global Ventures, BMO Global Asset Management, and others.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe invest in the companies that are leading the AI era. Waabi has developed a truly groundbreaking Physical AI platform that represents a fundamental leap forward in how next generation driverless technology is being developed,\u201d said Vinod Khosla<\/strong>, founder of Khosla Ventures\u201d. Their remarkable progress in autonomous trucking and rapid expansion into robotaxis demonstrates how their technology unlocks for the first time true scale in the real world. This breakthrough will define AI for decades to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWaabi is fundamentally changing the trajectory of autonomous transportation, said Brook Porter<\/strong>, Partner and Co-Founder at G2 Venture Partners. \u201cTheir simulation-first end-to-end AI is a powerful enabler, accelerating commercial adoption while dramatically reducing capital needs to scale. Waabi is unlocking the potential for autonomy to drive vehicle efficiency and utilization, catalyzing the shift to a more sustainable transportation system.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith a trillion miles driven globally each year, self-driving is one of the largest and most important AI opportunities of our time,\u201d said Jensen Huang<\/strong>, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. \u201cWaabi represents a true breakthrough by treating autonomy as a scalable intelligence problem. Built on NVIDIA compute, Waabi is unlocking real deployment\u2014and we\u2019re proud to support them as one of the future giants of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Waabi\u2013Uber Partnership<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n

Building on the progress and maturity of Waabi\u2019s autonomous trucking offering, the company is launching its second application of Physical AI: robotaxis. \u201cWe are thrilled to partner with the best-in-class ridesharing platform to bring about a safer, more efficient, and sustainable future,\u201d said Urtasun.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

With Waabi\u2019s expansion into robotaxis, the company is exclusively partnering with Uber to deploy robotaxis powered by the Waabi Driver on the Uber platform. As part of this strategic partnership, Uber will invest additional milestone-based capital to support the development of Waabi\u2019s robotaxis and the deployment of 25,000 or more Waabi Driver-powered robotaxis over time, substantially accelerating the adoption of robotaxis at scale.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWaabi\u2019s expanded focus on robotaxis marks an important milestone for their team and the AV industry more broadly,\u201d said Dara Khosrowshahi<\/strong>, CEO of Uber. \u201cWe\u2019re very excited to deepen our partnership with Waabi as they significantly scale their Physical AI Platform and enter a new phase of an already remarkable journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

About Waabi<\/b><\/h4>\n

Waabi is pioneering Physical AI \u2013 starting with autonomous trucks. AI visionary Raquel Urtasun founded Waabi in 2021 with an unwavering belief that Physical AI could revolutionize how humanity moves and connects. Today, Waabi is a global force pioneering a breakthrough approach that demonstrates autonomous vehicles can be scalable, efficient, and safe.<\/p>\n

Behind every breakthrough at Waabi are people who care deeply about reshaping the physical world through diverse perspectives, from AI researchers and roboticists to trucking experts and operators. Our approach to Physical AI has earned the backing of world-class investors \u2013 including BDC, EDC, BMO, Uber, Nvidia, Volvo, BlackRock, and Porsche SE \u2013 who share our vision for efficient, safe, and scalable autonomous solutions. For more information, visit www.waabi.ai<\/a>.<\/p>\n

SOURCE: Waabi<\/em><\/p>\n

Tags: Artificial Intelligence (AI)<\/a>, Autonomous Vehicles<\/a>, funding<\/a>, Internet of Things (IoT)<\/a>, seed funding<\/a>, Telematics<\/a>, Truck<\/a>, Uber<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cToronto, your Waabi will be arriving shortly.\u201d Named after the Japanese word for \u201csimple,\u201d Toronto-based autonomous-vehicle startup Waabi just achieved the largest funding round in the history of Canada\u2019s technology sector as it aims...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[1],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24719"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}