W aabi, led by a computer scientist, is hiring veteran engineers from competing self-driving tech companies as it prepares to go head-to-head with bigger players.
The Toronto-based company, which initially focused on developing its artificial intelligence-enabled technology with an advanced driving simulation it developed, is expanding to add a team of hardware engineers to integrate sensors, lidar, vision and computing system into trucks as it shifts to real-world testing. The Waabi's new hardware team is led by Eyal Cohen, who was previously with Apple, and includes Jorah Wyer, who worked for robot truck startups.
Our goal is to bring self-driving trucks to the world and trucks are physical so you need a hardware team, says founder and CEO Urtasun, who is also a professor of computer science at the University of Toronto.
Waabi's news comes in conjunction with the young company's debut appearance on the Forbes list of the most promising private companies in North America that are using artificial intelligence to shape the future. Urtasun was a judge for the list in 2021. The company emerged from stealth in June of 2021 with an $83.5 million funding round and plans to catch up to other companies by using cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools.
“We don't feel at all that we are late to the game or we will be delayed with respect to the other competitors.”
Waabi says its hardware and software teams are fully integrated to enable faster development of self-driving vehicles with continuous validation in Waabi World, its high-fidelity, closed-loop simulator.
As the operating environment is easier for robot drivers to master, trucking and delivery services have become a leading focus of self-drive development. The $800 billion trucking market is eager for solutions to meet rising demand for shipping because of the ongoing shortage of long-haul drivers.
Waabi has a new hardware team after it hired a former TuSimple vice president as its chief commercial officer. When trucks using Waabi's technology will be ready to begin hauling commercial loads is not something that Urtasun will discuss.
She said that they are going very, very fast and that they are not ready to unveil what is their timetable.
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