Kiwi-founded autonomous driving firm Wayve raises $1.5b

London-based autonomous driving company Wayve, co-founded by New Zealand engineering graduate Alex Kendall, has secured $1.5 billion to accelerate the global rollout of its AI-powered platform.

Kendall, who grew up in Christchurch, announced the company had closed a $1.2b Series D funding round, with additional milestone-based capital from Uber, taking the total secured to $1.5b. The raise values the company at $8.6b.

The funding supports commercial deployment of Wayve’s end-to-end artificial intelligence system for autonomous driving, including robotaxi trials from 2026 and consumer vehicle integration from 2027.

Kendall graduated from the University of Auckland’s engineering school in 2013 before completing a PhD in deep learning, computer vision and robotics at Cambridge. He co-founded Wayve in 2017. Previously, he worked on drone algorithms at US start-up Skydio and was named in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in 2020.

The Series D round was led by Eclipse, Balderton and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and included new investment from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Baillie Gifford, British Business Bank, Icehouse Ventures and Schroders Capital.

Microsoft, Nvidia and Uber participated in the round, alongside global automakers Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Stellantis.

Wayve says the funding accelerates its transition from research-focused AI development to scaled commercial deployment of what it calls an “end-to-end embodied AI” driving platform.

Unlike some competitors, the company’s system runs entirely on onboard vehicle compute and embedded sensors and does not rely on high-definition maps or city-specific engineering.

Robotaxis from 2026

Wayve-powered robotaxis will launch commercial trials with Uber this year, starting in London before expanding internationally.

Uber has committed additional capital to support multi-year deployments of Wayve-equipped vehicles across more than 10 markets globally. Under the partnership, Wayve will supply its AI Driver software in L4-capable vehicles from participating automakers, while Uber will own and operate the fleet.

From 2027, passenger vehicles equipped with Wayve’s AI Driver are expected to go on sale, initially offering L2+ “hands-off” capability that allows vehicles to steer, navigate and respond to traffic under driver supervision.

Wayve licenses its software directly to automakers, allowing them to customise driving models for specific vehicles and brands.

The company says it became the first autonomous vehicle developer to drive “zero-shot” in more than 500 cities across Europe, North America and Japan within a single year – meaning it did not require city-specific fine-tuning before deployment.

Wayve attributes that performance to a foundation model trained on data from more than 70 countries and across multiple vehicle platforms.

Kendall says the capital raise positions the company to build a global autonomy platform.

“With $1.5 billion secured, we are building for a total addressable market that spans every vehicle that moves,” Kendall says.

“Autonomy will not scale through city-by-city robotaxi deployments alone. It will scale through a trusted platform that automakers and fleets can 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, anywhere.”

Microsoft chairman and chief executive Satya Nadella says Wayve is “pushing the frontier of embodied AI for autonomous driving”, while Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi says the partnership is designed to scale across multiple vehicle manufacturers and geographies.