Wayve

London-based company, founded in Cambridge in 2017, that develops the Wayve AI Driver, AI software for assisted and autonomous driving. It has raised about $2.8 billion and runs supervised robotaxi rides with Uber in London.

Industry: Autonomous driving software | Location: London, United Kingdom | Founded: 2017 | Total Funding: USD 1.5B (as reported)

About Wayve

Wayve is a British autonomous driving company that grew out of the University of Cambridge. It was founded in 2017 by the machine learning researchers Alex Kendall and Amar Shah, who were then PhD students. Shah initially served as chief executive with Kendall as chief technology officer; Kendall later took over as chief executive. The company is headquartered in London. Its product is what it calls Embodied AI, or the AI Driver. Instead of high-definition maps, lidar and hand-coded rules, the system drives mainly with ordinary cameras and a basic satnav route, using a neural network trained on large quantities of video and driving data. It combines imitation learning, where it copies expert human drivers, with reinforcement learning, where it improves each time a safety driver has to step in. The aim is generalisation, so a vehicle can handle roads in a city it has not seen. Wayve does not build vehicles or run a mobility network. It positions the AI Driver as software that partners embed across many vehicle types, and it works with Microsoft's Azure cloud to train its models. Wayve raised a US$3.5 million seed round in 2017. In May 2024 it raised about US$1.05 billion in a Series C led by SoftBank, with Microsoft and Nvidia participating. In February 2026 it announced a US$1.2 billion Series D at a post-money valuation of US$8.6 billion, or up to US$1.5 billion including a conditional US$300 million commitment from Uber tied to robotaxi deployment. The round was led by Eclipse, Balderton and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with Nvidia, Uber, Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Stellantis participating, and new backers including Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Baillie Gifford and the British Business Bank. In April 2026 it extended the Series D with US$60 million from AMD, Arm and Qualcomm Ventures. Ocado has also been named as an investor. On the commercial side, Nissan has committed to putting Wayve's system into production vehicles, and the company's Japan team is working on a driver-assistance programme with Nissan and a robotaxi pilot in Tokyo with Nissan and Uber. Uber and Wayve have begun supervised rides in London, with Transport for London having granted private-hire licences, and the companies plan to launch on Uber's app in more than 10 markets. Wayve has also trialled autonomous grocery deliveries with Asda. The Gulf is a natural reference point for the technology: Dubai has set a target of a quarter of journeys being driverless by 2030, and Saudi Arabia's plans include autonomous transport in projects such as NEOM. Wayve has not announced any Gulf deployment. Reported headcount figures vary between sources.

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