Wayve

Wayve is a London-based company building embodied AI for automated driving. Founded in 2017 by Alex Kendall and Amar Shah out of University of Cambridge machine-learning research, Wayve pioneered an end-to-end AI approach to self-driving: a single foundation model, trained on real-world driving data, that learns to drive directly rather than relying on hand-coded rules, HD maps, or location-specific engineering. Wayve licenses its AI Driver software to automakers and mobility platforms rather than manufacturing vehicles itself, aiming to scale autonomy across many vehicle types and markets with lower capital intensity than vertically integrated robotaxi operators. The company has raised over $2.5 billion across five rounds, most recently a $1.2 billion Series D in February 2026 that valued it at $8.6 billion post-money, backed by Eclipse, Balderton, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Uber, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Stellantis. Wayve is deploying its technology through partnerships including a robotaxi program with Uber that began supervised autonomous rides in London in 2026, and a multi-year agreement with Nissan to bring its AI Driver to next-generation ProPILOT production vehicles.