Wayve raises $1 billion to bring Tesla-like self-driving technology to more automakers

Image credits: Alex Kendall Wayve CEO

Wayve, a British-born startup developing self-learning rather than rule-based systems for autonomous driving, has raised $1.05 billion in Series C funding led by SoftBank Group. This is the largest AI funding in UK history and ranks among the top 20 AI fundings in the world to date.

NVIDIA and existing investor Microsoft also participated in the funding. Waye’s early stage investors included his head of AI at Meta, Yann LeCun.

Founded in Cambridge in 2017, Wayve raised $200 million in a Series B round led by Eclipse Ventures last January.

The company plans to use the new capital injection to develop products for “eyes on” assisted driving and “yes off” fully autonomous driving, as well as other AI-assisted vehicle applications, and expand its business globally. .

San Francisco has become known as a center for self-driving, with Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo and GM Inc.’s Cruise operating services in the city. In contrast, Wave’s “end-to-end” self-driving system began its operation around the small streets of Cambridge in an electric Renault Twizy.

Since then, the company has trained its models on delivery vehicles for companies such as British grocery delivery company Ocado, which invested $13.6 million in the startup.

Wayve’s approach to self-driving is similar to Tesla’s; Wayve plans to sell its self-driving models to various auto OEMs. Of course, this means that since Tesla has to rely on someone to buy its car brand, Wave will be collecting more training data to improve its models. However, the company has not announced any such automotive partners yet.

Wayve calls its hardware-agnostic mapless product “embodied AI,” and plans to distribute its platform not only to automakers, but also to robotics companies serving manufacturers of all kinds. enables learning from human behavior in various domains. real world environment. The company promises to deliver “language-enabled interfaces, personalized driving styles, and co-piloting” through research into multimodal and generative models known as LINGO and GAIA.

Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve, told Techcrunch: We’ve been working hard to build the technology…What happened last year is that everything actually started working. ”

He said the key moment is the “step change” in which the auto industry installs cameras around new cars, from which Wave pulls data for autonomous platforms. Of course, there is also a desire now to deploy AI and accelerate the transition from assisted driving to autonomous driving. This funding is therefore a validation of our technological approach and gives us the funds to turn this technology into a product and bring this product to market. ”

He added that Wayve also has big plans for robotics.

“Soon you will be able to buy a new car and it will be equipped with Wayve’s AI…and this will be applied to all kinds of tangible applications, not just cars but also other forms of robotics. But I think the ultimate thing we want to achieve here is to go far beyond the current state of AI with language models and chatbots. To truly realize a future where we can trust intelligent machines to delegate tasks and, of course, improve our lives, autonomous driving will be the first example.”

In a broader move to demonstrate the importance of this funding to the UK, Chancellor Rishi Sunak issued a statement of support: “From the first light bulb and the World Wide Web to AI and self-driving cars, the UK has a proud record of being at the forefront of some of the biggest technological advances in history.”

“We are very proud that the UK is home to pioneers like Wayve who are laying the foundations in developing the next generation of AI models for self-driving cars. “The fact that we have secured the largest investment to date in the industry is testament to our leadership in this industry and that our economic plans are working.”

“We are doing everything we can to create the economic conditions for businesses to grow and thrive in the UK. The UK already has the third-highest number of AI companies and private investment in AI in the world. “This announcement cements the UK’s position as an AI superpower,” he added.

Kentaro Matsui, managing partner of SoftBank Investment Advisors and director of Wave, also said in a statement: If we do this, we will be able to eliminate 99% of traffic accidents. As advanced intelligence redefines mobility and connectivity, contributing to a more convenient and secure society, SoftBank Group is pleased to be at the forefront of this effort with his Wayve. ”