Wayve, a UK-based artificial intelligence (AI) business, has secured an £840 million investment to develop self-driving vehicle technology.

Backed by SoftBank Group, NVIDIA and Microsoft, Wayve will use this investment to develop and launch the first “embodied AI” technology for self-driving vehicles in the UK.

The technology will enable self-driving vehicles to learn from and interact with a real-world environment, including the ability to navigate and learn from situations that do not follow strict patterns or rules, such as unexpected actions by drivers or pedestrians – going far beyond the capabilities of existing autonomous vehicle technology.

Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve, said: "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.”

Founded in 2017, Wayve was the first to develop and test an end-to-end (e2e) AI autonomous driving system on public roads. This paved the way for an industry-wide shift towards AI, coined ‘AV2.0’. Through its long-standing work, Wayve has successfully developed foundation models for autonomy, similar to a ‘GPT for driving,’ that can empower any vehicle to perceive its surroundings and safely drive through diverse environments.

Wayve’s investment comes as the UK’s Automated Vehicle Bill is set to conclude its passage through parliament in the coming weeks, laying the foundation for British companies to scale up and deploy their self-driving technology.

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