Companies deploy AI-powered self-driving big rigs to haul commercial loads between Dallas and Houston

This week, autonomous driving tech company Waabi announced an ambitious new 10 year partnership with Uber Freight to deploy “AI-powered autonomous trucks at scale” hauling commercial loads.

In a September 21 news release, Waabi said that the first “autonomous commercial load” was hauled between Dallas and Houston this week as part of the partnership between the two companies.

Waabi and Uber Freight plan to continue regularly operating an AI-powered autonomous trucking lane between Dallas and Houston. The companies are also looking at expanding to other key lanes in Texas as the partnership develops.

The load was hauled using a semi outfitted with Waabi’s proprietary “Waabi Driver” technology, which is the “first autonomous truck solution to be built around a foundation AI model, which unlike traditional approaches that require painstaking manual code adjustments, can automatically learn from data and generalize its learnings to all the situations it might encounter on the road, including those that it has never seen before.”

The companies say that over the next decade, they plan to deploy “billions of miles of Waabi Driver capacity alongside carrier partners on the Uber Freight network.”

“Uber Freight has the scaled freight network and marketplace expertise needed to efficiently and safely deploy our AI-powered autonomous driving technology at scale,” said Raquel Urtasun, Founder and CEO of Waabi. “The unique solution we are building together will empower carriers to dynamically and effectively deploy the Waabi Driver while also unlocking critical capacity for shippers and driving value throughout the supply chain. Together with Uber Freight, we are accelerating the future of autonomous trucking and providing a seamless path to autonomy for everyone.”

“This exciting partnership allows us to bring Waabi’s revolutionary generative AI innovation to the forefront of our vast freight network, providing our shippers and carriers nationwide with the tools needed to embrace autonomous technology and transform their operations safely and efficiently,” said Lior Ron, Founder and CEO of Uber Freight. “We are thrilled to work with Waabi to usher in a new era for our industry.”