Canadian AI Founder Raquel Urtasun Bets on Simulated Roads

Canadian AI founder Raquel Urtasun is pushing a simulation‑first path to autonomous trucking, turning generative models into safer, cheaper road tests. In recent public interviews and talks, Urtasun outlined how Waabi’s virtual worlds cut costs, speed iteration, and push Canada’s AI ecosystem from research to shipping freight.

Canadian AI Founder Raquel Urtasun Bets on Simulated Roads Who: Raquel Urtasun, University of Toronto professor and founder of Waabi, a Toronto‑based autonomous driving company. What: a simulation‑first strategy for self‑driving trucks powered by generative AI. When and where: detailed across recent public talks, company blog posts, and media interviews in Canada and the United States. Why it matters: Canada’s AI leadership is often framed as lab‑first; Urtasun’s approach is product‑forward, with freight as the proving ground and simulation as the engine room. Urtasun has long argued in public forums that autonomous driving cannot rely only on racking up human‑supervised road miles. It is slow, expensive, and misses the long tail of weird events that make driving difficult. Her answer is Waabi World, a photorealistic, behaviourally rich simulator that leans on generative models to create corner cases on demand. The pitch, repeated in press interviews and conference stages, is simple: teach an AI to drive in a virtual Canada that contains every storm, lane merge, and surprise a real truck might meet, then transfer that skill to highways where the business case is clearest. The truck