Tonly Heavy Industries vs Waabi: Autonomous vehicles & driving compared

November 2026 edition · assessment by Frontier Tech Intelligence

Waabi ranks 55 on the Robotics 100 with a score of 82; Tonly Heavy Industries ranks 61 with 81. Tonly Heavy Industries is ahead on production and commercials. Waabi is ahead on progress, technology, firepower and leverage. Level on deployment and positioning. Tonly Heavy Industries is based in Xianyang, China, Waabi in Toronto, Canada. Tonly Heavy Industries is named in 0 signals and Waabi in 19.

Tonly Heavy Industries →

Xianyang, Shaanxi, China · Robotics · Systems / Autonomous vehicles & driving · tonlyglobal.com

Tonly builds autonomous mining trucks, including pure-electric models, deployed at open-pit coal and metal mines.

Robotics 100 · rank 61 · score 81

Scores, Robotics (of 10)

Deployment10
Production10
Commercials8
Progress8
Technology6
Positioning8
Firepower8
Leverage8

Darker bar: ahead of the other company on that measure.

Positioning

Tonly invented and leads the Chinese wide-body off-road mining truck category and has become the volume channel through which autonomy reaches Chinese mines. Its own autonomy is largely supplied by partner EACON, an OEM-agnostic autonomous haulage provider, with Tonly contributing the vehicle, the new-energy powertrain and battery-swap capability; the two jointly released the EQ100E, a distributed-drive, cabless, all-battery-electric autonomous mining truck, in October 2025. The deployment record is the strongest in this batch: at CHN Energy Xinjiang Hongshaquan No.2 open-pit coal mine a fleet of 58 autonomous trucks operates with 52 running pure-electric, having logged over 500,000 kilometres of incident-free operation at a mine producing 20 million tonnes annually. Fleets also run at TBEA, Guanghui Energy and Xinjiang Yihua. Internationally it delivered 62 TLH135 hybrids to Shougang Marcona in Peru and 50 DTE145 battery trucks to Zijin La Arena. FY2025 revenue was RMB 6,389 million, up 3.98 percent, with net profit RMB 839 million, 23.0 percent gross margin and 23.3 percent ROE. The 2026 story is internationalisation and a large domestic order: H1 2026 overseas revenue rose 45.15 percent to RMB 714 million at 20.11 percent of revenue, and on 2026-07-16 Tonly signed a framework with contractor Xinjiang Hanxiang for 800 autonomous mining trucks.

Facts, with sources

  • controlled_by: public float (chair Fan Bin)tonlyglobal.com
  • 135-tonne mining excavator and DTE145 pure-electric trucktonlyglobal.com
  • DTE145 pure-electric trucktonlyglobal.com

28 facts on file.

Waabi →

Toronto, Ontario, Canada · Robotics · Systems / Autonomous vehicles & driving · waabi.ai

Waabi builds autonomous-driving systems through Waabi Driver and is developing and deploying Level 4 autonomous trucks and robotaxis with partners including Uber, Volvo and Aurora.

Robotics 100 · rank 55 · score 82AI Core · watchlist · score 61

Scores, Robotics (of 10)

Deployment10
Production2
Commercials4
Progress10
Technology8
Positioning8
Firepower10
Leverage10

Darker bar: ahead of the other company on that measure.

Positioning

Waabi is the clearest AV2.0 bet in this batch. Its Physical AI Platform pairs a verifiable end-to-end AI model with an advanced neural simulator so a single model powers both autonomous trucks and robotaxis, the basis of its capital-efficiency argument. Raquel Urtasun founded it in 2021 after serving as chief scientist at Uber ATG, the unit Uber sold to Aurora in 2020, so the January 2026 Uber deal is a reunion. That deal is the defining event: a USD 750 million Series C co-led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners, plus roughly USD 250 million in milestone-based capital from Uber to deploy 25,000 or more Waabi Driver-powered robotaxis exclusively on the Uber platform, for total available capital of USD 1 billion and the largest tech fundraise in Canadian history. On trucks, Waabi partners with Volvo Autonomous Solutions, which builds the VNL Autonomous at its Virginia facility with Waabi sensors, compute and driver. The weakness is deployment: commercial pilots in Texas still carry safety drivers, the first closed-course driverless run came in October 2025, and the planned end-2025 driverless public-highway launch slipped by several quarters, attributed to validating the trucks rather than the driver.

Latest signals

  • Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Waabi began autonomous customer operations for Warp in Texas.PR Newswire, all releases
  • Waabi declares its autonomous trucks ready for deploymentBetaKit
  • Waabi says its autonomous trucks are ready for deployment.BetaKit

19 signals name Waabi.

Facts, with sources

  • controlled_by: Raquel UrtasunNVIDIA blogs
  • Waabi and Uber deployment collaboration for Waabi Driver-powered robotaxis using NVIDIA DRIVE AGX ThorNVIDIA blogs
  • Waabi deployment collaboration with Uber to expand into the robotaxi market using Waabi Driver on NVIDIA DRIVE AGX ThorNVIDIA blogs

36 facts on file.

More comparisons

Questions this page answers

Tonly Heavy Industries or Waabi: which is ahead in robotics?

Waabi ranks 55 on the Robotics 100 with a score of 82; Tonly Heavy Industries ranks 61 with 81. Tonly Heavy Industries is ahead on production and commercials. Waabi is ahead on progress, technology, firepower and leverage. Level on deployment and positioning. Tonly Heavy Industries is based in Xianyang, China, Waabi in Toronto, Canada. Tonly Heavy Industries is named in 0 signals and Waabi in 19.

How do Tonly Heavy Industries and Waabi compare?

Waabi ranks 55 on the Robotics 100 with a score of 82; Tonly Heavy Industries ranks 61 with 81. Tonly Heavy Industries is ahead on production and commercials. Waabi is ahead on progress, technology, firepower and leverage. Level on deployment and positioning. Tonly Heavy Industries is based in Xianyang, China, Waabi in Toronto, Canada. Tonly Heavy Industries is named in 0 signals and Waabi in 19. Both company files carry the scores on eight measures, the facts with sources and the latest signals.

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