UK-based autonomous driving company Wayve has recently successfully completed a $1.2 billion Series D funding round, reaching a post-money valuation of $8.6 billion. This round was led by Eclipse, Balderton, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Microsoft, NVIDIA, Uber, and automakers such as Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Stellantis. The company plans to use the funds to advance the commercialization of its AI Driver autonomous driving platform in global consumer vehicles and ride-hailing fleets.
Alex Kendall, Co-founder and CEO of Wayve, stated: "We have secured $1.5 billion in funding and are building for a total addressable market covering all moving vehicles. This investment accelerates our path to broad commercial deployment, enabling us to build an autonomous driving layer that powers any vehicle, anywhere." The AI Driver platform is trained on diverse driving data from over 70 countries, runs using on-board computing and embedded sensors, and does not rely on high-definition maps or location-specific engineering.
Uber has joined the Series D round and committed to providing milestone-based funding to support Wayve-powered robotaxi deployments. The first commercial service is planned to launch in London in 2026, followed by expansion to at least 10 international markets. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said: "We are incredibly proud to continue deepening our partnership with Wayve, with plans to jointly deploy in more than 10 markets globally. Wayve's powerful end-to-end approach is designed for scale, safety, and effectiveness, and we are excited to work with them across multiple OEMs and geographies."
Starting in 2027, passenger cars equipped with the AI Driver platform will be available to consumers, initially offering L2+ hands-off capability. Wayve licenses its technology directly to automakers, allowing for brand-specific customization without requiring a complete hardware platform redesign. In 2025, Wayve signed a production partnership with Nissan to integrate the system into the next-generation ProPILOT Assist suite. Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa stated: "As we advance our autonomous driving roadmap, we see strong collaborative potential, aiming to deliver a safer, more intuitive driving experience for customers worldwide."
The training of the AI Driver platform is supported by Microsoft's Azure cloud infrastructure. Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said: "Wayve is pushing the frontier of embodied AI in autonomous driving, and Azure supports the scale, reliability, and security needed to bring this innovation into the real world. Through our partnership and investment, we are helping accelerate the path from breakthrough research to scaled commercial deployment with global automakers." The company has completed its transition from the research phase to international commercial deployment, industrializing its safety-by-design architecture into a production-ready platform.
