Wayve, a UK-based autonomous driving company powered by embodied AI, announced it has secured $1.5 billion in capital to accelerate the global commercial rollout of its end-to-end autonomy platform, including a $1.2 billion Series D round that values the company at $8.6 billion post-money.
The Series D was led by Eclipse, Balderton, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Baillie Gifford, British Business Bank, Icehouse Ventures, Schroders Capital, and other global institutional investors. Strategic investors Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Uber also participated, alongside global automakers Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Stellantis.
In addition to participating in the Series D, Uber committed additional milestone-based capital as part of the broader $1.5 billion secured to support the commercial rollout of Wayve-powered robotaxis. The companies plan to scale deployments across more than 10 global markets, beginning with a commercial service launch in London in 2026.
Founded in 2017, Wayve pioneered the application of end-to-end AI to autonomous driving and has since industrialized its safety-by-design architecture into a production-ready autonomy platform. The company licenses its AI Driver directly to automakers, enabling customization for specific vehicles and brands. The system runs entirely on onboard vehicle compute and embedded sensors without relying on high-definition maps or location-specific engineering, allowing it to generalize across markets.
Wayve plans to begin commercial robotaxi trials in 2026 through its partnership with Uber, deploying its AI Driver in L4-capable vehicles from participating automakers, with Uber owning and operating the fleet. From 2027, the company expects consumers to be able to purchase passenger vehicles equipped with its AI Driver, initially offering L2+ “hands-off” functionality under driver supervision, with a path toward L3 and L4 “eyes-off” capabilities.
Over the past year, Wayve said it became the first and only autonomous vehicle developer to drive zero-shot in more than 500 cities across Europe, North America, and Japan within a single year. Its foundation model has been trained on globally diverse data spanning over 70 countries and multiple vehicle platforms, enabling the system to generalize to new environments without city-specific fine-tuning.
The company positions its embodied AI platform as a unified autonomy layer capable of powering any vehicle, anywhere, as the broader industry increasingly converges around end-to-end AI as the path to scalable autonomy.
KEY QUOTES
“With $1.5 billion secured, we are building for a total addressable market that spans every vehicle that moves. Autonomy will not scale through city-by-city robotaxi deployments alone. It will scale through a trusted platform that automakers and fleets can deploy globally and improve continuously. This investment accelerates our path to widespread commercial deployment and positions us to build the autonomy layer that will power any vehicle, anywhere.”
Alex Kendall, Co-Founder And CEO, Wayve
“Wayve is pushing the frontier of embodied AI for autonomous driving, and Azure supports the scale, reliability, and safety needed to bring that innovation into the real world. Through our partnership and investment, we’re helping accelerate the path from breakthrough research to scaled commercial deployment with automakers worldwide.”
Satya Nadella, Chairman And CEO, Microsoft
“We are very proud to continue to deepen our partnership with Wayve, with plans to deploy together in more than 10 markets around the world. Wayve’s powerful end-to-end approach is purpose-built for scale, safety, and effectiveness, and we’re excited to work with them across multiple OEMs and geographies, which we’ll share more about soon.”
Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO, Uber
“This investment deepens our partnership with Wayve and supports Nissan’s plans to advance autonomous driving through scalable end-to-end AI. By strengthening this collaboration, we are reinforcing our competitiveness in intelligent mobility and our focus on long-term value creation.”
Ivan Espinosa, President And CEO, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd
“Wayve’s embodied-AI approach and end-to-end learning architecture represent an important innovation in autonomous driving technology. Their work aligns well with Stellantis’ platform-driven strategy and our focus on scalable, safety-first vehicle intelligence. We see strong potential for collaboration as we advance our autonomy roadmap, including our driverless AV Ready Platforms™, with the clear objective of delivering safer and more intuitive driving experiences for customers worldwide”.
Antonio Filosa, CEO, Stellantis
“Wayve’s end-to-end embodied AI approach appeared contrarian when Eclipse first backed the company in 2019. Today, it’s clear this vision is the scalable path to deploying autonomy globally as we stand on the edge of a transportation shift that will transform how the world moves, works, and lives. This capital reinforces Wayve’s leadership and positions the company to build one of the most valuable businesses of the next generation.”
Seth Winterroth, Partner, Eclipse
“Wayve is building a scalable, end-to-end embodied AI platform that we believe will help define the future of mobility. We’re proud to support their mission and look forward to deepening our partnership as Wayve accelerates global adoption of its autonomy platform.”
Kentaro Matsui, Managing Partner, SoftBank Global Advisers And Head Of The New Business Office, SoftBank Group
“We’ve been proud to support Wayve since the early days, backing Alex and his team as they pursued an ambitious – and at the time rather contrarian – vision for embodied AI. The technical achievements are extraordinary, but what’s more impressive is how this team has taken cutting-edge research out of the lab and deployed it in complex, real-world driving environments – turning breakthrough science into commercial reality. Born out of a tiny lab in Cambridge and now a global leader in its field, Wayve represents the very best of European innovation: world-class technology, global ambition and real-world deployment at scale.”
Suranga Chandratillake, General Partner, Balderton
“Wayve’s approach to embodied AI marks a true step forward in how driving intelligence is trained, scaled and deployed. In a space with only a handful of serious contenders, their technical edge, pace of execution and trusted relationships with leading ecosystem partners set them apart. Alex and his team are formidable and we’re proud to back them.”
Avid Larizadeh-Duggan, Head Of EMEA For Teachers’ Venture Growth, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan
“Wayve is a powerful example of the strength, ambition and potential of Britain’s innovative firms. This fund raise demonstrates the international confidence in our brilliant AI sector and reaffirms Britain’s position as the leading scale-up ecosystem in Europe. We will continue to create the conditions for world-leading firms like Wayve to start, grow and scale, creating great jobs and opportunities for people in every corner of our country.”
Liz Kendall, UK Technology Secretary Of State
“The growth of great British AI businesses like Wayve is a big vote of confidence in the UK and in the future of our auto industry that will help to boost jobs and growth across the sector. We’re proud to be backing this investment round, giving Wayve the firepower to scale up and thrive. I can’t wait to see more of their cars on the streets around the country and around the world in years to come.”
Peter Kyle, UK Business Secretary Of State
“Wayve is pushing the boundaries of innovation right here in the UK, and this £1.5bn investment will cement the UK as a powerhouse for the next generation of transport. We’re backing innovators with smarter regulation that unlocks growth, and giving firms like Wayve the opportunity to trial their driverless technology on our roads later this year.”
Heidi Alexander, UK Secretary Of State For Transport
