Wayve secures £1.1bn ($1.2bn) investment to launch driverless cars on UK roads

Wayve’s new capital will fund a “supervised autonomy” rollout that aims to put driverless robotaxis on London streets by 2026, the company announced in a statement to the press. The Series D round, led by Eclipse, Balderton and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, raised $1.5 billion in total, of which $1.2 billion came from a consortium of tech giants and automakers—including Uber, Microsoft, Nvidia, Mercedes‑Benz, Nissan and Stellantis—according to Independent. The infusion values the London‑based startup at roughly $8.6 billion (£6.4 billion), making it one of the largest ever funding events for a British tech company and the biggest AI‑focused raise in Europe, as reported by The Next Web.

The money will be split between building out Wayve’s proprietary AI stack and scaling the physical fleet needed for commercial trials. Wayve’s approach relies on deep‑learning models that ingest video streams, sensor data and real‑world driving patterns to generate control decisions, a method the firm says reduces reliance on hand‑crafted rule sets. By “supervising” the software with human operators during the early rollout, Wayve hopes to accelerate data collection and model refinement before moving to fully autonomous operation in consumer vehicles slated for 2027, Independent noted.

Uber’s participation is strategic: the ride‑hailing platform will integrate Wayve’s technology into its own driverless‑taxi ambitions for the UK market. In a separate filing, Uber confirmed an extra tranche of cash was earmarked specifically for the partnership, positioning the two firms to compete directly with Alphabet’s Waymo, which has already signaled plans to launch driverless private‑hire services in London next year, Independent reported. The collaboration gives Uber a home‑grown alternative to Waymo’s hardware‑heavy stack, while granting Wayve immediate access to a large, city‑wide rider base for its pilot.

Beyond Uber, the involvement of chipmaker Nvidia and cloud provider Microsoft signals confidence in Wayve’s compute architecture. Nvidia’s investment aligns with its broader push into automotive AI, where its GPUs power many autonomous‑driving workloads. Microsoft, meanwhile, is expected to supply the Azure infrastructure needed to train Wayve’s massive video‑based models at scale, a partnership echoed in the New York Times coverage of the round. The presence of traditional OEMs—Mercedes‑Benz, Nissan and Stellantis—adds manufacturing credibility and hints at future integration of Wayve’s software into production vehicles.

Analysts see the raise as a litmus test for Europe’s ability to compete in the global autonomous‑vehicle race. With the UK government still offering modest EV subsidies, Wayve’s billion‑dollar backing underscores a shift toward full‑stack AI solutions rather than incremental electrification. If the 2026 London trials prove successful, Wayve could set a template for “software‑first” robotaxis that bypasses the costly sensor suites favored by rivals, potentially reshaping the economics of driverless mobility across the continent.