Wayve, a UK-based leader in AI for autonomous driving, has extended its Series D round with a $60 million investment from leading tech companies.
In February the firm announced it has raised $1.2 billion in Series D investment, with a potential further $300m from investor Uber to support the development of Wayve-powered ‘robotaxis’ on the Uber network.
Now Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Arm and Qualcomm Ventures have joined the investment round with the combined $60m injection.
The London-based firm’s valuation is now almost $9bn as it shifts from AI research leadership to scaled commercial deployment of its end-to-end AI platform.
The previously announced Series D round was led by Eclipse, Balderton and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and brought in new investment from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Baillie Gifford, British Business Bank, Icehouse Ventures, Schroders Capital and other global institutional investors.
Microsoft, NVIDIA and Uber participated in the round, alongside global automotive manufacturers Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Stellantis.
Autonomous driving firm Wayve set for $500m NVIDIA investment
Wayve pioneered the application of end-to-end AI to autonomous driving in 2017 and has since industrialised its safety-by-design architecture into a production-ready autonomy platform.
From 2026, consumers will experience Wayve-powered robotaxis through commercial trials with Uber.
From 2027, they will be able to buy passenger vehicles equipped with Wayve’s AI Driver, starting with L2+ ‘hands-off’ capability that allows the vehicle to steer, navigate and respond to traffic under driver supervision.
Wayve licenses its AI Driver directly to automakers, providing tools to customize driving models for specific vehicles and brands.
The system runs entirely on onboard vehicle compute and embedded sensors, and doesn’t rely on high-definition maps or location-specific engineering.
Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve
By partnering with automakers and mobility platforms rather than vertically integrating, Wayve enables autonomy to scale globally with lower capital intensity.
Uber committed additional capital of $300m to support multi-year deployments of Wayve-powered robotaxis on the Uber network, with plans to scale to more than 10 markets globally.
The companies plan to launch their first service in London in 2026, with broader international rollout to follow.
Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve, said: “For embodied AI to scale, automakers need design choice and supply chain flexibility.
“We’re building an AI Driver that works across the full automotive compute ecosystem, from architectures already used in millions of vehicles today to the platforms powering the next generation of automated vehicles.
“Expanding our relationships with leading silicon companies helps bring that into production at a global scale, and we’re delighted to have these partners actively working with us on integration and deployment.”
Salil Raje, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Adaptive and Embedded Computing Group at AMD, said: “AI is moving into real-world systems, and that changes compute demands. It stops being about models and becomes about physical AI systems that have to sense, decide, and act reliably and in real-time. We see Wayve’s approach as an important step in bringing technologies like AI Driver into production at scale.”
Spencer Collins, Executive Vice President and Head of Corporate Development, Arm, said: “AI is ushering in a new era of increasingly intelligent and autonomous vehicles that require high-performance, power-efficient compute platforms to scale across a diverse and evolving ecosystem. The Arm compute platform is foundational to the AI-defined vehicle transformation, and our investment in Wayve further demonstrates our commitment to enabling advanced AI in vehicles and accelerating broad deployment.”
Quinn Li, Senior Vice President, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and Global Head of Qualcomm Ventures, said: “AI is becoming central to the driving experience and bringing it into vehicles requires close alignment between software and automotive platforms. Our collaboration with Wayve reflects a shared commitment to helping automakers bring AI Driver into production at scale, supporting diverse vehicle programs and long-term roadmaps on platforms like Snapdragon Ride.”
The investment builds on NVIDIA’s participation in Wayve’s £850m Series C funding round alongside SoftBank and Microsoft.