Waabi founder said at BetaKit\u2019s Most Ambitious: Town Hall that Canada could lead the physical AI revolution.<\/p>\n
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Raquel Urtasun believes the time is now for Canada to go \u201call in\u201d on physical AI, and that doing so could make the country a global player in the coming decades.<\/p>\n
Speaking with University of Toronto president Melanie Woodin at BetaKit\u2019s Most Ambitious<\/a>: Town Hall, the W<\/a>aabi<\/a> founder and CEO told audiences that the world is on the precipice of a physical AI revolution not unlike the generative one ushered in by OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT a few years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the digital world, things have, since 2022\u2019s ChatGPT moment, evolved significantly. In physical AI, that revolution is happening now,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cImagine you have the crystal ball before the ChatGPT moment. That\u2019s where we are now.\u201d<\/p>\n Raquel Urtasun, Waabi<\/p>\n Urtasun\u2019s Toronto-based company is at the forefront of that physical AI revolution. Waabi develops AI systems for autonomous vehicles, such as transport trucks and robotaxis. Acting as the \u201cbrain\u201d of these early forays into an autonomous Internet of Things, Waabi has been backed by tech giants like Uber, Volvo, and Nvidia, raising more than $1 billion CAD in funding<\/a> and deploying its AI across swaths of the United States.<\/p>\n Urtasun initially moved to Canada, from Spain, to be near the beating heart of AI research, but told Woodin that Canada had struggled to capitalize on many of the advances its own researchers had helped lay the foundation for. That, she said, doesn\u2019t have to be the case with autonomous transportation.<\/p>\n \u201cImagine you have the crystal ball before the ChatGPT moment. That\u2019s where we are now. We actually have the crystal ball, so we should just go all in,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have a tremendous opportunity to not only be a part of the equation, but to lead what this transportation of the future is.\u201d<\/p>\n The best of Toronto Tech Week <\/p>\n