Wayve, an autonomous driving startup, has raised £900 million in a Series D round led by Eclipse, Balderton and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Baillie Gifford, Icehouse Ventures, Schroders Capital, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Uber, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Stellantis and British Business Bank. It specialises in developing AI foundation models for autonomous driving that equip vehicles with a ‘robot brain’ able to learn from and interact with real-world environments. The funding will accelerate the shift from AI research leadership to scaled commercial deployment of its end-to-end AI platform.
Its technology applies AI foundation models to autonomous driving, enabling vehicles to interpret surroundings and respond to complex road conditions. The platform is designed as a software layer that can be deployed by automakers globally across different vehicle brands, models and markets. The architecture has been industrialised into a production-ready autonomy platform since Wayve first pioneered its application in 2017.
From 2026, consumers will experience Wayve-powered robotaxis through commercial trials with Uber. From 2027, passenger vehicles equipped with Wayve’s AI Driver will be available to buy, beginning with L2+ “hands-off” capability that allows vehicles to steer, navigate and respond to traffic under driver supervision.
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 platforms that automakers can trust, 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 everywhere.
