The Self-Driving Startup Nobody Saw Coming | E2289
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.2 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2026
⏱️ 73 minutes
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Summary
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Self-driving just stopped being a science problem and became an engineering challenge instead. That's the through-line of today’s double-header with the CEOs of two of the most important AV companies in the world — Wayve's Alex Kendall and Waabi's Raquel Urtasun. Between them: ~$2B raised in the last six months, Uber as a partner, Nissan and Volvo as OEMs, and a shared bet that end-to-end AI plus world models beats Waymo's city-by-city map-and-pray approach.
If you want to understand the state of the self-driving industry beyond recent Waymo announcements, this is the episode for you.
Guest Links:
Wayve: wayve.ai/
Waabi: http://waabi.ai/
Alex Kendall https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexgkendall/
Raquel Uratsun: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raquel-urtasun-298400139/
Company Links:
Wayve’s GAIA-2 world model: https://wayve.ai/thinking/gaia-2/
Wayve’s 500 city roadshow: https://wayve.ai/thinking/ai-500-roadshow-500-cities/
Wavye’s most recent funding round: https://wayve.ai/press/series-d/
Waybe + Uber: https://wayve.ai/press/wayve-nissan-uber-robotaxi-collaboration/
Waabi closed-loop simulator: https://waabi.ai/insights/waabi-world
Waabi + Uber: https://www.uberfreight.com/en-US/blog/uber-freight-and-waabi-introduce-industry-first-autonomous-truck-deployment-solution
Timestamps:
0:00 Alex Kendall (Wayve) joins the show
1:19 The contrarian bet on end-to-end AI and world models in 2017
3:05 What is a world model? GAIA-2 and GAIA-3 explained
7:34 Sensor agnosticism: camera, radar, LiDAR and minimum bar for safety
9:56 $1.5B raised — have we cracked self-driving?
10:09 Render: Find out why 5 million developers are already using the all-in-one cloud platform, Render. Go to https://render.com/twist and apply for the Render Startup Program to get $500-$100,000 in free credits, depending on your stage and backers.
20:38 Squarespace: Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST
25:03 How consumers will actually pay: bundle, subscription, or free trial
30:15 IM8 Health: Start feeling like your best self every day. Go to https://IM8health.com/twist and use the code TWiST to get a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, and 10% off your order.
35:59 Raquel Urtasun (Waabi) joins the show
36:25 World models as controllable simulators for physical AI
43:34 One AI brain across trucks, robotaxis, and beyond
47:35 What changed in AI to make 2026 the deployment year
52:28 Why Waabi raised $1B when they're capital-efficient
58:52 Where Waabi is today: Volvo VNL Autonomous, Dallas-Houston, Uber Freight
1:00:50 Per-mile pricing and the Driver-as-a-Service model
1:07:20 Has Uber tried to buy Waabi? "Not for sale"
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | We pioneered in-to-end learning when it was widely dismissed. |
| 0:02.8 | Self-driving in a way that economically scales to the world is not solved. Our partnership is not up to $25,000. It's over $25,000 or, in other words, a minimum of $25,000. Volume. It's like double the cars, Tesla builds a year. And that's just one of our partners. And if you're a manufacturer selling a car that doesn't have this, I think your demand is really going to fall off a cliff. |
| 0:22.6 | Every car has been intelligently driven by a year. And that's just one of our partners. And if you're a manufacturer selling a car that doesn't have this, I think your demand is really going to fall off a cliff. Every car has been intelligently driven by a machine that never blinks. Yeah, you'll pay for your own private chauffeur that's in your car. Has Uber tried to buy you? Why is not for sale for anybody? This week in startups is brought to you by IIM8 Health. Start feeling like your best self every day. |
| 0:39.4 | Go to I-M8Health.com slash twist and use the code Twist to get a free welcome kit, |
| 0:45.1 | five free travel sachets and 10% off your order. |
| 0:49.0 | Squarespace. |
| 0:49.8 | Turn your idea into a beautiful website. |
| 0:51.9 | Go to squarespace.com slash Twist for a free trial. |
| 0:55.5 | When you're ready to launch, use offer code Twist to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. |
| 1:02.0 | And render. |
| 1:03.0 | Find out why 5 million developers are already using the all-in-one cloud platform render. |
| 1:08.0 | Go to render.com slash twist and apply for the render startup program |
| 1:12.6 | to get $500 to $100,000 in free credits depending on your stage and backers. |
| 1:19.0 | Hello everybody and welcome back to Twist. My name is Alex and today we're going deep on one of my |
| 1:23.6 | absolute favorite topics in the world and no, it's not about open cloth. No, today we're |
| 1:27.7 | talking about self-driving cars. We're bringing back the CEO of a company that we had on the show |
| 1:32.1 | back in late 2004 when Wave, a UK-based self-driving startup, was doing incredibly interesting |
| 1:38.3 | things working hard to bring technology to market. Since then, quite a lot of us happened. |
| 1:43.0 | We're going to dive into what Wave has done recently, how close it is to changing your life and my life. So please join me |
| 1:48.3 | and welcoming back to the show. It's co-founder and CEO Alex Kendall. Alex, how you doing? |
| 1:53.3 | Awesome. Hi, Alex. It's so good to have you back. So late 24, |
| 1:58.8 | feels like 29 years ago in AI terms. |
... |
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