Canada-based autonomous vehicle technology developer Waabi emerged from stealth on Tuesday having secured $83.5m in a series A round featuring peer Aurora Innovation and ride hailing service Uber.
Venture capital firm Khosla Ventures led the round, which was also backed by 8VC, BDC Capital’s Women in Technology Venture Fund, Omers Ventures and Radical Ventures, as well as angel investors including Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Pieter Abbeel and Sanja Fidler.
Waabi is developing an artificial intelligence-equipped self-driving software system the company claims has a complex reasoning capability in order to reduce the amount of time required for drive testing.
Raquel Urtasun, Waabi’s founder and CEO, said: “Waabi is the culmination of my life’s work to bring commercially viable self-driving technology to society and I am honoured to be joined by a team of extraordinary scientists, engineers and technologists who are equally committed to executing on this bold vision.”
Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi added: “Raquel is truly one-of-a-kind – a tenacious and inspiring leader who empowers those around her to excel. I cannot wait to see everything she accomplishes for the self-driving industry.”
