Raquel Urtasun
Raquel Urtasun, founder and CEO of Waabi, an AI company building the next generation of self-driving technology.
Founded in 2021, Waabi has rapidly advanced in the trucking industry, raising $200 million in fresh capital. They believe they can succeed in autonomous trucking, despite other companies’ failures, because of generative AI software that it claims can assess and respond to road conditions in ways that are closer to human-style reasoning. With backers like Uber, Khosla Ventures and Nvidia, this is the company’s biggest funding round to date. It aims to begin operating driverless semis in Texas in 2025.
Raquel completed her bachelor's degree from the Universidad Publica de Navarra and got her Ph.D. in computer science from the EPFL in Switzerland.
She has a rich academic background, having worked as a postdoctoral scholar at MIT and UC Berkeley and later as an assistant professor at the Toyota Technological Institute. Currently, she teaches at the University of Toronto.
Before launching Waabi, Raquel spent four years at Uber, leading the Advanced Technologies Group focused on research on self-driving vehicles.
Urtasun's work has been recognized through various awards and features:
▶ Ontario Chamber of Commerce's Emerging Technology CEO of the Year for 2023
▶ Featured in Time's The 100 Most Influential People in AI 2023 list
▶ NVIDIA Pioneers of AI Award in 2022
▶ Received the NSERC EWR Steacie Award for her contributions to the field of computer vision in 2017
▶ Featured in Forbes, TechCrunch, and Bloomberg.
Apart from teaching students at the University of Toronto, Urtasun co-founded the Vector Institute in 2017, a not-for-profit organization that offers grants to dedicated researchers and assists AI startups looking to scale.
She was also a judge in Forbes' AI 50 2021: America's Most Promising AI Companies.
Waabi has raised $200 million in fresh capital and believes it can succeed in autonomous trucking, despite other companies’ failures, because of generative AI software that it claims can assess and respond to road conditions in ways that are closer to human-style reasoning. With backers like Uber, Khosla Ventures and Nvidia, this is the company’s biggest funding round to date. It aims to begin operating driverless semis in Texas in 2025.
Raquel's successful journey as a female founder in the autonomous vehicle sector is an inspiration to young AI enthusiasts, and she aims to encourage more women to join the industry.
𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭: The name "Waabi," chosen by Urtasun, symbolizes "she has vision" in Canada's First Nations tribes and "simple" in Japanese, reflecting her vision of simplifying autonomous vehicles.
Last Updated: May 2024