Wayve has completed a $1.05 billion Series C funding round headed by Softbank Group. This lesser-known UK-based startup is developing a self-learning autonomous driving system that is different from the rule-based system. This fundraise is among the world’s top 20 AI investment rounds and the largest in the UK.
Wayve initially received funding from Meta’s AI head, Yann LeCunn, but in the recent round, Nvidia also contributed along with the startup’s present investor, Microsoft.
Wayve autonomous driving model
Wayve was founded in 2017 in Cambridge and acquired $20 million in a series A funding round in 2019, which was led by Eclipse Ventures, which also led the firm’s series B round of $200 million in the month of January 2022.
The startup is planning to use this newly generated capital to develop its products for assisted driving “eyes on” and its fully autonomous driving system called “eyes off,” along with other AI-assisted automotive applications. The firm is also looking to expand its operations globally.
Far from the US’s buzzing roads in cities like New York and Pittsburgh, which have become centers of self-driving system development, Wayve self-driving tests began on the narrow lanes of Cambridge on a two-seater Renault Twizy, which is an electric car.
Since that time, it has been training its autonomous driving models on the delivery vehicles of companies like Ocado, which is a UK grocery delivery company, and it has also invested $13.6 million in the initiative.
Wayve plans to sell its autonomous driving system to auto original equipment manufacturers, but Wayve’s approach to self-driving is similar to that of Tesla. In this way, Wayve will get much more data for training to improve its system, while Tesla will have to rely on its cars only. But the firm has not named any partners so far.
The company has plans beyond cars
Wayve calls its product “embodied AI,” which does not rely on specific hardware or maps, and plans to provide its system to robotic companies along with car makers, which will allow the platform to learn from human behavior in a wide range of real-world scenarios.
The company has promised that its models will provide language-responsive interfaces for co-piloting and personalized driving styles called GAIA and LINGO, which are generative multi-models.
Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve, said that they started the company seven years ago to develop embodied AI systems, and they have been working on it since. Just last year, the tech got to a point where it started working, according to Techcrunch.
He also said that the funding round is a validation of their work and their approach to the technology and will give them the opportunity to go and turn it into a useful product and bring it to the market for the masses.
Speaking of Wayve’s major undertakings for robots, he said,
“Very soon you’ll be able to buy a new car, and it’ll have Wayve’s AI on it… Then this goes into enabling all kinds of embodied AI, not just cars but other forms of robotics. I think the ultimate thing that we want to achieve here is to go way beyond where AI is today with language models and chatbots.”
He also added,
“But to really enable a future where we can trust intelligent machines that we can delegate tasks to, and of course they can enhance our lives, self-driving will be the first example of that.”
Source: Techcrunch.
A managing partner at Softbank Investment Advisers and a Wayve board member, Kentao Matsui, said that this type of technology has transformative potential as it is revolutionizing mobility and could decrease traffic accidents by 99%.