ai/”>wayve, a UK-born startup developing a self-learning system rather than a rules-based system for autonomous driving, has closed a $1.05 billion Series C financing led by SoftBank Group. This is the largest ai fundraiser ever in the UK and is in the top 20 ai fundraisers globally to date.
He also participated in the increase Nvidia and existing investor microsoft. Waye's initial investors included GoalHead of ai, Yann LeCun.
Wayve, founded in Cambridge in 2017, raised $200 million in a series B round in January last year led by Eclipse Ventures.
The company plans to use the new capital injection to develop its product for “eyes on” assisted driving and “yes out” fully automated driving, other ai-assisted automotive applications and expand its operations globally.
San Francisco has become known as the epicenter of autonomous driving deployments, with Alphabet-owned Waymo and GM-owned Cruise operating services in the city. By contrast, Wayve's “end-to-end” self-driving system began life on the small streets of Cambridge in an electric Renault Twizy.
Since then, it has been training its model on delivery vehicles for companies such as British grocery delivery company Ocado, which invested $13.6 million in the startup.
Wayve's approach to autonomous driving is similar to Tesla's, but Wayve plans to sell its self-driving model to a variety of automakers. The implication, of course, is that Wayve will get a lot more training data to improve its model, since Tesla must rely on someone buying its brand of car. However, the company has not yet announced any such automotive partner.
Wayve calls its hardware-agnostic mapless product “embodied ai” and plans to distribute its platform not only to automakers but also to robotics companies that serve manufacturers of all types, allowing the platform to learn from behavior. human in a wide variety of real-world environments. The company's research into generative and multimodal models, known as LINGO and GAIA, will offer “language-sensitive interfaces, personalized driving styles and co-pilot,” the firm promises.
Wayve co-founder and CEO Alex Kendall told Techcrunch: “Seven years ago, we founded the company to build embedded ai. “We’ve been head down building technology… What happened last year was everything really started to come together.”
He said the key moment has been the auto industry's “sea change” in having cameras around new cars, from which Wayve can extract data for its autonomous platform: “Now their production vehicles are coming out with GPUs, surrounding cameras , radar and of course, Of course, the desire to incorporate ai and enable an accelerated journey from assisted driving to automated driving So this fundraising is a validation of our technological approach and gives us the capital to convert. this technology in a product and bring this product to the market.”
He added that Wayve also has big plans for robotics.
“Very soon you will be able to buy a new car and it will have Wayve ai… Then this will allow all kinds of ai built in, not just cars, but other forms of robotics. I think the last thing we want to achieve here is to go much further than where ai is today with language models and chatbots. But really enabling a future where we can rely on intelligent machines that we can delegate tasks to and of course that can improve our lives, and autonomous driving will be the first example of that.”
In a move that signified the importance of this fundraising more broadly for the UK, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak issued a statement of support saying: “From the first light bulb or the World Wide Web, to the artificial intelligence and self-driving cars, the UK has a proud history of being at the forefront of some of the biggest technological advances in history.”
“I am incredibly proud that the UK is home to pioneers like Wayve, who are leading the way in developing the next generation of ai models for autonomous vehicles. The fact that a local British company has secured the largest investment yet in a UK ai company is a testament to our leadership in this industry and that our plan for the economy is working,” he said.
“We are leaving no stone unturned in creating the economic conditions necessary for businesses to grow and prosper in the UK. We already have the third largest number of ai companies and private ai investment in the world, and this announcement cements the UK's position as an ai superpower,” he added.
Also in a statement, Kentaro Matsui, managing partner of SoftBank Investment Advisers and member of the board of directors of Wayve, said: “ai is revolutionizing mobility… The potential of this type of technology is transformative; It could eliminate 99% of traffic accidents. “SoftBank Group is delighted to be at the forefront of this effort with Wayve, as advanced intelligence redefines mobility and connectivity, contributing to a more convenient and secure society.”
