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Waabi and Volvo Autonomous Solutions have reached a major milestone in autonomous trucking, integrating the Waabi Driver with the Volvo VNL Autonomous. Waabi and Volvo Autonomous Solutions have reached a major milestone in autonomous trucking, integrating the Waabi Driver with the Volvo VNL Autonomous. The partners note that this achievement underscores the significant progress both companies are making together in advancing autonomous freight. “The future of autonomous trucking hinges on three critical areas: autonomous technology that is safe, scalable, and can deliver on customer needs; hardware that is purpose-built for autonomous operations from the ground up; and a commercial deployment model that solves problems in the supply chain without added friction,” said Raquel Urtasun, Founder and CEO of Waabi. “Together with Volvo, we are leading autonomous trucking forward. The Volvo VNL Autonomous, powered by the Waabi Driver, is the next step in ushering in a stronger, safer, and more efficient era in transportation.” Waabi is backed by investors including Khosla Ventures, Uber, NVIDIA, Volvo Group Venture Capital, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Scania Invest, Ingka Investments, HarbourVest Partners, BDC, EDC, Radical Ventures, Incharge Capital, and others. The successful integration of the Volvo VNL Autonomous and Waabi Driver marks a significant milestone in the strategic partnership between Waabi and Volvo Autonomous Solutions to accelerate the development and adoption of autonomous trucks. With this integration complete, both companies are now focused on delivering an autonomous solution that is safe and supports broad commercial deployment. “Partnerships like the one between Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Waabi play an important role not only in advancing autonomous technology, but also in building the broader ecosystem required to support commercial deployment,” said Nils Jaeger, President of Volvo Autonomous Solutions. “Autonomy has the potential to address some of the biggest challenges in the transport industry, including safety, efficiency, and capacity. By working together, we are laying the groundwork for a more resilient future for freight.” MORE FOR YOU The autonomous transport solution offered by Volvo Autonomous Solutions includes a vehicle purpose-built for autonomous driving, a virtual driver, required infrastructure, operations, and uptime support as well as a cloud solution that controls the transport system and manages logistics flows. The solutions developed by V.A.S. are tailor-made for each customers’ needs and intended to make their operations safer, productive, and sustainable. The joint solution combines Waabi’s industry leading self-driving technology with Volvo’s autonomous truck, designed with redundant systems to enable safe autonomous operations: Waabi asserts that the Waabi Driver “is the only interpretable and verifiable end-to-end AI model that is capable of true generalization, enabling it to safely and quickly scale autonomous driving across different geographies, including highways and general surface streets.” This is key to deploying commercial operations that are scalable, meet the needs of customers, and work within existing logistics operations. The Volvo VNL Autonomous is a truck purpose built for autonomy with redundancies or back-up systems for safety critical functions such as braking, steering and communication. Waabi Proceeding Independently With Driverless Launch Waabi has been conducting on-road testing with safety drivers for three years. Will Waabi launch driverless in Texas by year end as promised in statements earlier this year? I put this question to Waabi CEO Urtasan. “We are tracking toward driverless software readiness by the end of this year. It is an important milestone in which we demonstrate that our verifiable end-to-end AI software is ready for driverless operations. We will keep an observer in the cab until the fully redundant hardware platform is ready, said Dr. Urtasun, adding that “this intentional approach underscores our commitment to safety and working alongside our partners as we reach these important milestones, and together enable the future of Level 4 autonomous trucks.” Dr. Urtasun made it clear that this driverless software launch is a Waabi specific milestone that is independent from the partnership with Volvo Autonomous Solutions. Robot Trucks Chomping At The Bit Waabi’s partnerships and tech developments are significant in the autonomous trucking space, yet their activities are only one of several autonomy commercialization endeavors. Aurora, the leader in commercialization of on-road trucks so far, are now running – with observers on board -- in Texas from Fort Worth to El Paso, as well as between Dallas and Houston. Aurora terms this “driverless” operations since the observer is not responsible for driving. In their 3Q25 investor letter, Aurora revealed that their five vehicles in service have driven 100,000 driverless miles with perfect on-time performance and safety record. They plan to launch “hundreds” of driverless trucks early next year, removing the observer and returning to the humanless (no observer) operations they briefly launched last spring. Last month, Bot Auto operated “humanless” trucks on public highways in Texas for engineering validation purposes. The company has stated they will begin commercial freight operations by the end of this year. Earlier this week, International Motors, LLC (International) and PlusAI announced a key step in advancing the commercialization of Level 4 autonomous trucks built on the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Hyperion platform. International and PlusAI have indicated their commercial launch of driverless trucks in occur in 2027. Kodiak is running driverless off-road and is planning to launch on-road operations in the coming years. Last month, Gatik, the dominant player in autonomous freight for regional logistics networks, today announced a significant expansion of its commercial partnership with Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada’s largest retailer. Marking a milestone for the autonomous trucking industry, the companies have signed a first-of-its-kind, multi-year growth agreement to deploy Gatik’s autonomous fleet across Loblaw’s distribution network in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Total Contract Value for Gatik’s autonomy services to Loblaw is approximately $50M Canadian dollars. By the end of 2025, Gatik will be operating twenty autonomous trucks equipped with Gatik’s next generation sensor suite, with a further thirty autonomous trucks to be deployed by the end of 2026. Earlier this year, Gatik publicly committed to operating Freight-Only (driverless) services across multiple markets in 2025. Based on an interview with the company, they affirm that Gatik is on track to meet this commitment. As I’ve said many times, 2025 continues to be an inflection point for the tech to “graduate” and get a real job, i.e. carrying commercial freight. Scaling and reducing cost-of-operations is what matters going forward. Disclosure: Richard Bishop is an Advisor to and/or an equity holder in the following companies mentioned in this article: Aurora, Gatik, PlusAI. Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions
