Driverless cars: Wayve scoops Europe’s biggest AI investment
The electric-car market might be stalling, but the promise of driverless cars continues to excite investors, said Julia Kollewe in The Guardian. The latest beneficiary is a UK startup, Wayve, which has scooped $1.05bn in a funding round led by Japan’s SoftBank to develop “the next generation” of AI-powered vehicles. The move – also backed by chipmaker Nvidia and Microsoft – “is the biggest investment to date in a European AI startup”, and a welcome piece of good news for UK plc. PM Rishi Sunak claimed it “anchors the UK’s position as an AI superpower”.
Top marks for hyperbole. But this deal is certainly “significant” for Britain, which has ambitions of being a global hub of AI expertise, said Peter Campbell and Tim Bradshaw in the FT – “but has largely failed to grow or retain its most promising companies in the field”. It also confirms SoftBank boss Masayoshi Son’s
“renewed hunt for AI investments”, having been “slow to deploy capital in the sector”. Wayve’s system “allows vehicles to learn while driving” – avoiding the need for costly mapping and laser-based sensors that have hindered larger US rivals, such as Alphabet’s Waymo. Rather than developing its own fleet, the company is in talks with several carmakers and also hopes to expand its “embodied AI” tech to other kinds of robots.
Founded in a garage in 2017 by two Cambridge University students, Alex Kendall and Amar Shah, Wayve has “steadily raised capital over the past five years”, said Katie Prescott in The Times. In a test drive, “the car behaves in a strangely human-like way”, while hopefully eliminating “human error”. The future could arrive sooner than we think. There is “growing optimism” that autonomous vehicles will be on UK roads by as soon as 2026.