Wayve raises $1.05 billion
British self-driving technology startup Wayve announced a $1.05 billion Series C round led by SoftBank Group, with participation from NVIDIA and Microsoft, to accelerate its mission to “reimagine autonomous mobility through embodied intelligence.”
Founded in 2017, the startup says that it is building foundation models for autonomy, similar to a ‘GPT for driving,’ that can empower any vehicle to see, think, and drive through any environment. The software leverages cameras, sensors and other modern car technology to see and react to different driving environments.
Wayve licenses its self-driving technology to other companies, including retailers and automakers.
“At Wayve, our vision is to develop autonomous technology that not only becomes a reality in millions of vehicles but also earns people’s trust by seamlessly integrating into their everyday lives to unlock extraordinary value. This significant funding milestone highlights our team’s unwavering conviction that Embodied AI will address the long-standing challenges the industry has faced in scaling this technology to everyone, everywhere. Our collaboration with SoftBank, NVIDIA, and Microsoft will help advance our mission to redefine driving with AI at the core. This investment will enable us to develop and launch our first Embodied AI products for the automotive industry, empowering OEMs to provide consumers with trustworthy and beneficial automated driving experiences.” – Alex Kendall, Co-founder and CEO of Wayve.
“AI is revolutionizing mobility. Vehicles can now interpret their surroundings like humans, enabling enhanced decision-making that promises higher safety standards. The potential of this type of technology is transformative; it could eliminate 99% of traffic accidents. SoftBank Group is delighted to be at the forefront of this effort with Wayve, as advanced intelligence redefines mobility and connectivity, contributing to a more convenient and safer society.” – Kentaro Matsui, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, Head of the New Business Office at SoftBank Group.
“Wayve is pioneering new AI applications for their next-generation AV2.0 approach, built on NVIDIA DRIVE Orin and DRIVE Thor, which uses the new NVIDIA Blackwell architecture designed for transformer, LLM, and Generative AI workloads. Together, we can help enable self-driving vehicles that deliver the intelligence, dependability, and skill of the best human drivers.” – Rishi Dhall, Vice President of Automotive Business at NVIDIA.
“Microsoft is pleased to be working with Wayve to develop and deploy Wayve’s end-to-end AI autonomous driving products for automotive enterprise customers. By utilizing Microsoft’s supercomputing capabilities and cloud computing technology, copilot-enabled developer platform, enterprise data management applications, and leading AI model commercialization expertise, Wayve can deliver and scale innovative Embodied AI solutions that enable safer and more accessible autonomous driving experiences.” – Dominik Wee, Corporate Vice President of Manufacturing and Mobility at Microsoft.