Raquel Urtasun from Waabi

Raquel Urtasun is the Founder and CEO of Waabi.

Waabi is an AI company building the next generation of self-driving technology. With a world-class team and an innovative approach that unleashes the power of AI to “drive” safely in the real world, Waabi is bringing the promise of self-driving closer to commercialization than ever before.

Waabi has raised $83.5M+ from leading investors including Khosla Ventures, Uber, 8VC, Radical Ventures, Golden Ventures, OMERS Ventures, Volvo Group Venture Capital AB, BDC Capital’s Women in Technology Venture Fund, AI luminaries Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Pieter Abbeel and Sanja Fidler.

Raquel is also a Full Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto and a Co-Founder of the Vector Institute for AI. She previously was the Chief Scientist and Head of R&D at Uber Advanced Technologies Group (ATG).

Takeaways

The best advice that Dara Khosrowshahi the CEO of Uber gave her.

How Waabi's approach differs from Waymo, Cruise, Tesla and other self-driving platforms.

Waabi's unique AI-first approach to self-driving uses a simulation system to train its AI platform and achieve scalability and safety.

Why and how Waabi integrates their hardware solution at the OEM level.

The initial focus of Waabi is on self-driving trucks, which have better unit economics and address the driver shortage in the industry.

How Canada can foster a robust AI ecosystem and reduce brain drain.

How we can foster more and better commercialization from Canadian universities.

Waabi's capital needs, why Raquel chose specific types of investors and her thoughts on capital efficiency.

Chapters

00:00 Early Interest in Self-Driving Cars and Robotics

02:04 Progress in Self-Driving Technology

04:20 The Need for a Revolution in Self-Driving Technology

05:22 Transition to U of T and Uber Advanced Technologies Group

10:20 Focus on Trucking in Self-Driving

13:36 Integration of Hardware and Software in Waabi

16:15 Importance of Scale and Simulation in Self-Driving

21:36 Transition from Professor to Executive to Founder

24:30 Team Composition and Differences in Research and Startups

27:14 Raising Capital and Capital Efficiency

35:28 Building a Strong AI Ecosystem in Canada

39:15 Personal Interests and Motivations

40:43 Excitement for Waabi's Future

46:45 Focus on Safety and Transforming the World