Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Thursday, February 5th.

Today on Forbes, robot trucker Wabi wades into Robotaxi battle with billion-dollar raise.

There's a new competitor in the war for Robotaxi supremacy, and it's an unlikely one.

Wabi, a Canadian self-driving truck startup created by

AI scientist Raquel Erdison. The company says it's raised up to $1 billion from venture

firms and Uber to help commercialize its robotic big rig business and fund a surprise foray

into the Robotaxyi market currently led by

Alphabet's Waymo. The Toronto-based company, which is supplying autonomous driving software to

Volvo to deploy large numbers of robot semis in the U.S., will also work exclusively with Uber

to put tens of thousands of robo taxies on its ride-hale platform,

powered by its tech. This according to what Erdison told Forbes. She declined to say when

vehicles operated by the so-called, quote, Wabi driver would hit the road and which carmaker

will produce them. Wabi CEO Erdison, formerly chief scientist for Uber's in-house self-driving car unit,

Uber ATG, said, quote, Uber is the largest ride-sharing network globally, so that enables an

incredible market for us to enter, but it helps that we are deploying a minimum of

25,000 robots on the Uber network.

Putting at least 25,000 robo taxis into service would be a huge increase for that market,

given that Waymo, which operates in six U.S. cities and urban regions,

currently books about half a million paid rides a week, with a total fleet of fewer than 3,000

electric vehicles. Though Erdison has said in the past that Wabi was looking to expand its

driverless tech beyond commercial trucking, this is the first time she's confirmed a specific

plan to do so. There's no shortage of competition in the space, however. Beyond Waymo and efforts by Tesla to

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