The ‘AI superstar’ CEO behind a self-driving truck unicorn on why Gen Z is a better hiring bet than industry veterans

Raquel Urtasun, co-founder of autonomous truck startup Waabi, talks to Fortune about unicorn hiring in the AI age: “Fear can paralyze your ability to embrace that change.”

Raquel Urtasun is a Gen Xer, but she’s putting her faith in Gen Z. 

The 50-year-old began her career in academia, working alongside the “Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton, before building out Uber’s self-driving technology division. Now, the cofounder and CEO of the autonomous trucking unicorn Waabi, she realizes there’s a lot of fear and anxiety about AI reshaping the future of work. But she sees something else entirely, and it’s not just because she’s raised over $1 billion for her unicorn: this is one of the best times to be alive, and to be a young worker.

“Fear can paralyze your ability to embrace that change,” Urtasun told Fortune when asked about Gen Z’s worries about an uncertain AI future. “And I think that everybody should take this change as an opportunity.”

Since its 2021 launch, Waabi has raised more than $1 billion to develop technology once considered science fiction, including a recent Series C round co-led by Khosla Ventures. In partnership with Volvo, its autonomous trucks are already testing road operations, offering a glimpse of a driverless future arriving faster than many once expected.

For Urtasun, that optimism extends to who she hires. Rather than seeking candidates with decades of industry experience, she looks for something harder to teach: raw adaptability.

It’s a mindset she developed in academia, where she learned to spot and shape young talent before it calcified into conventional thinking. “As a professor, you rely on really raw young talent,” she said.

At Waabi, she applies the same logic—prioritizing workers who are versatile, eager to learn, and willing to rethink assumptions from scratch. “AI-first—that’s the talent that is really making the transformation,” she said. “It’s not the talent that has been, 20 years doing software engineering.”

‘AI Superstar’ CEO tells Gen Z to bet big on curiosity

A native of Spain, Urtasun earned her Ph.D. in computer science from EPFL in Switzerland in 2006, did postdoctoral work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, Berkeley, and later became a professor at the University of Toronto—where she built a reputation for pioneering AI research. (This is where Geoffrey Hinton entered the picture.)

For Urtasun, the most valuable lesson from her years in higher education wasn’t mastering a single speciality—it was learning how to learn. She credited her academic career with teaching her to adapt quickly, embrace interdisciplinary thinking, and continuously pick up new skills as technology evolves.

By 2017, the “AI Superstar,” as described by Wired, was tapped by Uber to head up the company’s new advanced technologies division. Four years later, she struck out on her own, founding Waabi with ambitions to rethink autonomous driving from scratch.

One of Waabi’s core principles, she said, is simply curiosity—a mindset shaped in part by years spent working with students and watching how younger generations approach learning. That experience has also fueled her optimism about the future of work in the AI era. Today’s graduates are entering the workforce with tools previous generations never had—and it would be a mistake to not take advantage of the opportunity.

“If I’m somebody graduating now,” she said. “I [would] be so excited.”

Waabi CEO learned about proving your haters wrong from Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi

Working at the intersection of software and physical AI has never been easy—but few industries have tested founders’ patience quite like autonomous driving. 

For years, promises that self-driving cars were just around the corner fueled billions in investment. But reality has proved more complicated. Waymo, a subsidiary of Google, is the biggest operator of fully autonomous vehicles—but after sone two decades of existence, operates in just 11 U.S. cities. It also continues to face uphill battles in both its existing locations and hopeful expansions.

A survey from consulting firm McKinsey earlier this year found expectations for fully autonomous passenger vehicles and long-haul trucking have continued to slip, with timelines now stretching closer to the end of the decade.

For Urtasun, the industry’s complications is just evidence of the need for “infinite grit” as an entrepreneur. To the disagreement of others who thought she was entering the space too late, she believed the industry needed to be rebuilt around an AI- and safety-first approach.

“Not everybody is going to believe you at the beginning,” she said. “But you can prove them wrong.”

Part of that resilience, Urtasun added, came from her years at Uber, where she “learned to be an executive” while working under CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. 

Khosrowshahi encouraged her to remember that employees absorb more than strategy—they watch how leaders react in moments of uncertainty. Even amid setbacks or “big fires,” as Urtasun described them, leaders have to signal a path forward.

“Lead with positivity,” she said, recalling his advice. “Although you might not realize, every gesture, everything—people pay attention.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com