Waabi

Raquel Urtasun is a Spanish-Canadian computer scientist and one of the most cited researchers in machine learning for self-driving. A professor of computer science at the University of Toronto since 2014, she co-founded Toronto's Vector Institute for AI alongside Geoffrey Hinton in 2017. That same year Uber recruited her as chief scientist and head of R&D for its Advanced Technologies Group, where she built and led the self-driving unit's Toronto research arm until Uber sold ATG in 2021. Rather than join the acquirer, Urtasun founded Waabi in Toronto in 2021 with an $83.5 million seed round — one of the largest initial raises in Canadian startup history — betting that an 'AI-first' approach built around Waabi World, a closed-loop neural simulator, could get to driverless trucking with a fraction of the fleet miles and headcount of incumbents. As CEO she raised a $200 million Series B in 2024 backed by Uber, Nvidia, Volvo, and Porsche, pushed Waabi's Texas trucking operations toward fully driverless service, and has become one of the industry's leading voices on next-generation, foundation-model-based autonomy.