Good morning. An autonomous vehicle startup just got one of the largest venture capital financings in Canadian history and has plans to bring more robotaxis to life – soon. Our sci-fi transportation dreams are slowly coming true and the future is in focus today, along with a new project that will probe the cosmos.

Metals: Surging precious metal prices are expected to keep takeover traffic moving at a brisk pace among gold and silver miners

Trade: India and the EU clinched a free-trade agreement calling it the "mother of all deals" after nearly 20 years of negotiations

Tariffs: General Motors expects tariffs could cost it as much as US$4-billion this year

Hi, I’m Joe Castaldo, and I write about artificial intelligence for The Globe’s business desk. That means I’m also curious to try new technologies.

There were two things I wasn’t prepared for the first time I took a self-driving Waymo taxi in Los Angeles last summer. The first was a moral dilemma: Would I be depriving an underpaid Uber driver of a gig? Was I so anti-social that I couldn’t bear to ride in awkward silence with another person?

Then, there was the mild embarrassment. People stared at the ridiculous-looking car, jacked up with cameras, when it arrived to pick me up.

The ride itself was perfect. The Waymo navigated around buses picking up passengers, stopped when it was supposed to and made smooth left turns through busy intersections.

At the end of my ride, the car pulled into a downtown parking lot and fastidiously positioned itself before the doors unlocked, while a group of vaping young men looked on. Surely, I thought, these guys were going to roast me as I, a dorky tourist, exited this dorky robot car. Instead, they pulled out their phones to film the Waymo driving away.

The experience showed me that while self-driving cars are still novel, they are very real and are gaining consumer acceptance.

That’s what Raquel Urtasun is betting, too.

Her company, Waabi Innovation Inc., announced a massive US$750-million fundraising round today to continue expanding into autonomous long-haul trucking, along with a plan to launch robotaxis in partnership with Uber.

Waabi makes an AI system that powers self-driving vehicles. It’s already been operating autonomous trucks in Texas for a while, with a safety driver in the cab. (Eventually, that person won’t be needed.) For Urtasun, robotaxis are the logical next step. The system Waabi has built, she said, is just as equipped to handle city streets as it is highways.

The Toronto company said it will deploy a minimum of 25,000 autonomous vehicles on Uber’s ride-hailing service, but hasn’t shared details about where or when.

After my Waymo experience, I’ve been wondering about my moral dilemma and what would motivate consumers to take a robotaxi over a regular Uber. “Everyone I know that has used it even a couple of times doesn’t want to go back,” Brook Porter said, whose firm G2 Venture Partners invested in Waabi. Safety is one reason: Uber has long faced scrutiny for sexual assault and misconduct committed by drivers on its network.

Porter also told me the experience is “just so much better,” offering privacy and control over things like the AC and the music. “It’s your space instead of needing to navigate the complexities of a driver,” he said. He acknowledged his impression could be coloured by the fact that he lives in the bubble of Silicon Valley.

But maybe navigating the complexities of another human being is a good thing – a necessity of living in the world, in fact – whereas retreating into our personal bubbles is alienating. Or perhaps I’m overthinking this. Porter also said that consumers will be drawn to robotaxis because of economics. The cost of human drivers will go up, while the cost of technology will go down.

For businesses and consumers, that may be what matters most.

Hundreds of antennas will take root in B.C.’s Okanagan Valley for an ambitious project to monitor signals from space. When completed, the Canadian Hydrogen Observatory and Radio-transient Detector (CHORD) will include the core array near Penticton, B.C., along with two “outriggers” at locations in the United States. When working together, the widely spaced stations will be able to observe distant radio sources with higher precision than the core site alone.