Waabi, a generative AI company, has announced a new strategic partnership with Volvo Autonomous Solutions (a subsidiary of Volvo Cars) to jointly develop and deploy a fleet of autonomous trucks.
Together, the companies are looking to mutually leverage their technologies and experiences to facilitate safer, more efficient, and more sustainable freight transportation options while more broadly tackling the challenges facing the transportation industry today.
The partnership will see Waabi’s virtual driver system, the Waabi Driver, integrated into the Volvo VNL Autonomous, Volvo’s autonomous truck. The two companies have laid the groundwork for this integration and are preparing to commence testing in 2025. The truck, itself, is set to enter production at the OEM’s flagship New River Valley assembly plant and is based on Volvo’s autonomous technology platform, allowing it to support a range of operational needs, use cases, and truck brands operating under the Volvo Group.
For Waabi, the collaboration will help show the potential of the company’s next-generation AV2.0 approach. Based on an end-to-end interpretable, verifiable AI model powered by an advanced neural simulator, this approach aims to enable autonomous trucks that can safely generalize to different on-road scenarios. In integrating this with Volvo’s autonomous truck, the company is looking to facilitate a safe autonomous solution to support broad commercial deployment.
Waabi and Volvo’s announcement represents the latest step in a longer-term collaboration between the companies that began in January 2023. At that time, the Volvo Group Venture Capital became a strategic investor in Waabi before later investing in the company’s $200 million (£161.2 million / €193.7 million) Series B funding round.
