The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Huge billion-dollar investment in British AI vehicle pioneers Wayve
UK firm Wayve has secured $1.05 billion (£840 million) to build artificial intelligence (AI) products for self-driving cars.
Wayve is known as a pioneer in so-called “embodied AI” for autonomous driving – effectively foundation models on which autonomous vehicles are built, enabling them to learn from and interact with a real-world environment.
The huge round of funding for Wayve is being led by Japanese tech giant SoftBank, with Nvidia and existing investor Microsoft also backing the firm.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he was “incredibly proud” of the investment and said it was a “testament to our leadership in this industry”.
Wayve co-founder and chief executive Alex Kendall said: “At Wayve, our vision is to develop autonomous technology that not only becomes a reality in millions of vehicles but also earns people’s trust by seamlessly integrating into their everyday lives to unlock extraordinary value.
“This significant funding milestone highlights our team’s unwavering conviction that embodied AI will address the long-standing challenges the industry has faced in scaling this technology to everyone.
“Our collaboration with SoftBank, Nvidia and Microsoft will help advance our mission to redefine driving with AI.
“This investment will enable us to develop and launch our first embodied AI products for the automotive industry, empowering OEMs to provide consumers with trustworthy and beneficial automated driving experiences.”
Wayve was founded in 2017 and is known for being the first to develop and test an end-to-end AI autonomous driving system on public roads, and has since expanded on this work with its embodied AI.
“From the first electric light bulb or the worldwide web, to AI and self-driving cars, the UK has a proud record of being at the forefront of some of the biggest technological advances in history,” the PM said.
“This announcement anchors the UK’s position as an AI superpower.”
“This anchors the UK’s position as an AI superpower