Wayve, the UK self-driving technology company, has secured $1.5bn in funding as it prepares to move from research-led development into large-scale commercial deployment of its autonomous driving platform.
The company said it had closed a $1.2bn Series D round, valuing the business at $8.6bn post-money, with additional milestone-based capital committed by Uber as part of a broader partnership to deploy robotaxis globally. The financing signals growing industry consensus around Wayve’s end-to-end “embodied AI” approach, which seeks to enable autonomous driving without reliance on high-definition maps or city-specific engineering.
The round was led by Eclipse, Balderton Capital and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and included new backing from institutional investors such as Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Baillie Gifford, Schroders Capital and the British Business Bank. Strategic investors Microsoft, NVIDIA and Uber also participated, alongside automakers Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Stellantis.
Wayve plans to launch commercial robotaxi trials with Uber in London in 2026, with further international markets to follow. From 2027, consumers will be able to buy vehicles equipped with Wayve’s “AI Driver”, beginning with supervised L2+ hands-off capability and progressing to more advanced autonomous functions over time.
Unlike vertically integrated rivals, Wayve licenses its software directly to vehicle manufacturers, allowing it to be deployed across multiple brands and markets. The system runs entirely on onboard vehicle compute and sensors, a design the company says allows autonomy to scale globally at lower capital cost.
In the past year, Wayve has tested a single AI driving model across more than 500 cities in Europe, North America and Japan without local retraining — a so-called “zero-shot” capability that underpins its claim to generalised, market-agnostic autonomy.
Alex Kendall, Wayve’s co-founder and chief executive, said autonomy would not scale through “city-by-city robotaxi rollouts alone”, but through a trusted platform adopted by automakers and fleets worldwide. “This investment accelerates our path to widespread commercial deployment and positions Wayve to become the autonomy layer for any vehicle, anywhere,” he said.
The funding represents one of the largest ever capital raises by a UK AI company and reinforces Britain’s position as a leading hub for applied artificial intelligence and advanced mobility technology.
