Posts Tagged “driverless big rigs”
TORONTO — Waabi, a company pioneering generative AI for the physical world, today announced it has raised $200 million (USD) in an oversubscribed Series B round, led by Uber and Khosla Ventures.
The funding round includes participation from best-in-class strategic investors NVIDIA, Volvo Group Venture Capital, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Scania Invest and Ingka Investments.
Additional financial investors include HarbourVest Partners, G2 Venture Partners, BDC Capital’s Thrive Venture Fund, Export Development Canada, Radical Ventures, Incharge Capital, and others. The new funding, which brings total investment in Waabi to more than $280 million (USD), will support the company’s deployment of fully driverless, generative AI-powered autonomous trucks in 2025.
Only three years on from the company’s inception Waabi is on the verge of reaching Level 4 autonomy. This industry-leading pace and capital efficiency is made possible through the company’s revolutionary approach to unleashing generative AI in the physical world.
Waabi has pioneered a single end-to-end AI system that is capable of human-like reasoning, enabling it to generalize to any situation that might happen on the road, including those it has never seen before. Because it is able to reason, the system requires significantly less training data and compute resources compared to other end-to-end approaches.
Further departing from these approaches, Waabi’s system is fully interpretable and its safety can be validated and verified. The innovation marks a first across autonomous vehicles and AI systems deployed in the physical world. This end-to-end AI system, paired with Waabi World, the world’s most advanced simulator, reduces the need for extensive on-road testing and enables a safer, more efficient solution that is highly performant and scalable from day one.
“I have spent most of my professional life dedicated to inventing new AI technologies that can deliver on the enormous potential of AI in the physical world in a provably safe and scalable way,” said Raquel Urtasun, Founder and CEO of Waabi. “Over the past three years, alongside the incredible team at Waabi, I have had the chance to turn these breakthroughs into a revolutionary product that has far surpassed my expectations. We have everything we need — breakthrough technology, an incredible team, and pioneering partners and investors — to launch fully driverless autonomous trucks in 2025. This is monumental for the industry and truly marks the beginning of the next frontier for AI.”
This round of investment brings together pioneers and trailblazers across deep tech, AI, automotive, as well as shipping and logistics ecosystems, all in support of Waabi’s innovative approach and ambitious vision. With the infusion of strategic capital, Waabi is well positioned to launch fully driverless trucks in Texas, expand driverless operations to new geographies, and transform the supply chain.
Many, if not most truckers have read or heard about new technology creating driverless big rigs. Well, here is a driverless tractor; not as in tractor trailer, but as in a farm tractor.
Liz Truss received a demonstration of a ‘hands-free’ tractor on a visit to one of Cornwall’s (U.K.) largest cauliflower growers.
Riviera Produce’s £100,000 investment in next generation farming was wheeled out for the recent visit of the Defra secretary.
Used by an increasingly growing number of farmers, the GPS-guided tractors use high-accuracy automated systems to independently steer themselves and calculate the correct position of the tractor in areas with rolling slopes and rough ground, thus enabling the farm to produce the best possible crops.
Having witnessed the technology in action during her visit, Truss praised its “ability to drive harvests higher as well as improving food quality.”
Brassicas are worth over £650 million to the fresh produce industry, and it is expected that even more farms will introduce these next-generation driverless tractors in the coming years.
David Simmons, MD of Riviera Produce, and supporter of the Brassica Growers’ Association’s Love Your Greens campaign, said: “With its precision technology, GPS has improved the quality of the cauliflowers, broccoli and cabbages we grow, ensuring our customers get maximum satisfaction from our produce.
“It has transformed our farming business by improving precision of applications in the fields, which has led to reduced use of fertiliser and plant protection products with a more accurate application and faster planting times.”