Uber Freight CEO Lior Ron leaves to join self-driving startup Waabi as COO

Summary

Self-driving truck maker Waabi has hired autonomous vehicle industry veteran and Uber Freight CEO, Lior Ron, to step in as chief operating officer, as the startup looks to scale its commercial operations ahead of its planned launch of driverless trucks on public highways later this year. Rebecca Tinucci, who previously spent six years building Tesla’s charging network before the automaker gutted its charging staff last year, will take over as head of Uber Freight. Ron will stay on as Uber Freight’s chairman. “[Ron] will lead the go-to-market strategy, expanding key partnerships, and really bringing Waabi from the phase that we’ve been in to commercialization at scale,” Raquel Urtasun, Waabi’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. “He has shown his ability to scale from inception to a $5 billion revenue company with Uber Freight.” Urtasun and Ron go way back: Ron previously co-founded self-driving truck company Otto, which Uber acquired in 2016. He overlapped with Urtasun at Uber, where the latter was chief scientist, leading the ride-hail firm’s self-driving research from 2017 to 2021. Uber Freight is a digital marketplace connecting shippers with carriers, and the company aims to integrate self-driving trucks with the platform via partnerships with startups like Aurora Innovation and Waabi. Uber’s partnership with Waabi isn’t affected by Ron’s departure, he said. While working at Uber Freight, Ron says, he met regularly with chief supply chain officers and big carriers that he said “could not wait” for self-driving trucks. “If the most impactful thing to do in the next decade is autonomy, and if the timing is right, then for me it’s really about joining forces with who I think is most positioned to lead the transformation,” he added. Techcrunch event San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025 Urtasun claims Waabi’s “AI-first” approach to scaling autonomy has allowed it to do more with fewer resources and in less time than competitors. Given this is a capital-intensive industr...