Wayve secures $200m to drive autonomous vehicle tech
Autonomous vehicle tech firm Wayve has announced a $200m funding injection as it looks to ramp up development of its new AI technology.
The King’s Cross-based firm has secured investment from long-term backer Eclipse Ventures, which led the round, with additional backing from firms including D1 Capital Partners and Baillie Gifford and additional support from Microsoft and Virgin.
Bosses at Wayve said the new funding would be used to drive the development of its new technology, AV2.0, which the firm describes as the “next wave of autonomous vehicles”.
Alex Kendall, co-founder and chief executive of Wayve said: “Today, we have all of the pieces in place to take what we have pioneered and drive AV2.0 forward.
“We have brought together world-class strategic partners in transportation, grocery delivery and compute, along with the best capital resources to scale our core autonomy platform, trial products with our commercial fleet partners, and build the infrastructure to scale AV2.0 globally.”
Wayve’s AV2.0 technology uses a camera sensing suite and a “deep learning system” that draws on road data provided by partners including Ocado Group, Asda, and DPD.
The latest funding round puts total capital raised by Wayve at over $258 million since its foundation with backers of the business including Ocado and a string of high-profile angel investors including Sir Richard Branson, Rosemary Leith and Linda Levinson.