Alex Kendall@alexgkendall
Another major milestone in @wayve_ai's history. Proud to say we’ve secured $1.5 billion Series D investment at $8.6 billion valuation.
We started a decade ago with a contrarian technical thesis: that self-driving is an AI problem, and Embodied AI will enable autonomy to scale without rules, HD-maps and using mass-produced hardware.
Now we're entering commercialisation, we're taking a contrarian commercial strategy too, selecting the business model with the largest opportunity to scale. We're not selling our own cars, which limits scale to one brand. We're not operating our own fleets, which limits autonomy to city-by-city expansion. We're licensing autonomy to any vehicle, anywhere.
This new business model is only possible now because we've built a general purpose AI driver, which is flexible to work with any vehicle architecture and proven to drive all around the world. This unlocks a high margin software licensing model, which we're now excited to be deploying with global partners with the strength of this new funding round.
Thank you to our new and returning financial investors for backing our vision all the way: @EclipseVentures, @balderton, @SoftBank, @OTPPinfo, @BaillieGifford, @BritishBBank, @IcehouseVenture and @Schroders among other global institutional investors.
We're deepening our partnerships with @Microsoft and @nvidia to build and deploy Embodied AI at global scale, and with @Uber, who are announcing supervised robotaxi trials in 10 cities around the world, starting with London this year.
To top it off, three top-10 global automakers across Europe, Japan and USA are backing and believing in our technology for consumer vehicles and robotaxis: @MercedesBenz, @Nissan and @Stellantis.
I’ve always believed that our end-to-end AI approach would lead the way in autonomy. This latest investment and the endorsement that comes with it make me believe that the industry is also now converging on that idea too.
What's next? We have a busy next few years of commercial delivery: supervised robotaxi trials around the world in 2026 and consumer vehicle sales from 2027. Thank you to the incredible Wayve team for making this all possible.
Check out all details here: wayve.ai/press/series-d/
