Self-driving truck startup Waabi has appointed Lior Ron, the former chief executive of Uber Freight, as chief operating officer, as it prepares to launch driverless trucks on public highways by the end of 2025.
Ron, an autonomous vehicle industry veteran who co-founded self-driving truck company Otto before it was acquired by Uber in 2016, will lead Waabi’s go-to-market strategy and oversee the expansion of key partnerships. “He has shown his ability to scale from inception to a $5 billion revenue company with Uber Freight,” Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun told TechCrunch.
Urtasun and Ron previously worked together at Uber, where she served as chief scientist leading its self-driving research from 2017 to 2021. Ron will remain chairman of Uber Freight, with Rebecca Tinucci, a former Tesla charging network executive, stepping in as its new head.
Waabi, founded in 2021, has raised $287.7 million to date, including $200 million from a Series B round earlier this year. The company’s “AI-first” approach to autonomous trucking, supported by its proprietary Waabi World simulation platform, has enabled it to accelerate training, testing, and validation with fewer resources. “At the beginning of the year, we reached feature complete,” Urtasun said. “We are on track for our driverless launch by the end of the year, which is the start of commercialization.”
The company plans to begin operations in Texas, a hub for autonomous freight in the United States, but has yet to announce routes or launch partners. Waabi is collaborating with Volvo Autonomous Solutions to develop and deploy custom-built autonomous trucks. “We’re going to create a commercial-ready solution that can really meet them,” Ron said, adding that Waabi’s trucks will be designed to drive directly to customer depots, eliminating the need for intermediate terminals.
