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24 février 2026 · lecture de 3 min

Funding marks industry convergence around the end-to-end embodied AI approach pioneered by Wayve as it enters scaled commercial deployment

• Closed a $1.2B Series D led by financial investors, with participation from Microsoft, NVIDIA and Uber, alongside investment from global automakers Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Stellantis.
• Uber will invest additional milestone-based capital to scale Wayve-powered robotaxi deployments globally, within the broader $1.5B of capital secured to support commercial rollout.
• Wayve will launch commercial robotaxi trials in 2026 and deploy supervised autonomy software in consumer vehicles from 2027.
• First and only AV company to drive zero-shot in over 500 cities across Europe, North America and Japan in a single year.

London, UK, 25 Feb 2026 - Wayve, the leader in embodied AI for autonomous driving, today announced it has raised $1.2 billion in a Series D investment round, bringing its post-money valuation to $8.6 billion. The funding accelerates the company's shift from AI research leadership to scaled commercial deployment of its end-to-end AI platform.

The round was led by Eclipse, Balderton and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and brings in new investment from Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Baillie Gifford, British Business Bank, Icehouse Ventures, Schroders Capital and other global institutional investors.

Microsoft, NVIDIA and Uber participated in the round, reflecting support for Wayve's embodied AI as a foundational software layer for deploying autonomy at a global scale. Leading global automotive manufacturers Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Stellantis also invested, in support of advancing Wayve's unified AI platform spanning L2+ "hands off" through L3/L4 "eyes off" driving across vehicles, brands and markets.

From research to commercial deployment

Wayve pioneered the application of end-to-end AI to autonomous driving in 2017 and has since industrialised its safety-by-design architecture into a production-ready autonomy platform.

From 2026, consumers will experience Wayve-powered robotaxis through commercial trials with Uber. From 2027, they will be able to buy passenger vehicles equipped with Wayve's AI Driver, starting with L2+ "hands-off" capability that allows the vehicle to steer, navigate and respond to traffic under driver supervision.

Wayve licenses its AI Driver directly to automakers, providing tools to customize driving models for specific vehicles and brands. The system runs entirely on onboard vehicle compute and embedded sensors, and doesn't rely on high-definition maps or location-specific engineering. By partnering with automakers and mobility platforms rather than vertically integrating, Wayve enables autonomy to scale globally with lower capital intensity.

In the past year, Wayve became the first and only AV developer to drive zero-shot in more than 500 cities across Europe, North America and Japan, meaning without city-specific fine-tuning before deployment. That performance is enabled by Wayve's foundation model trained on globally diverse data spanning over 70 countries and a wide range of vehicle platforms, creating unmatched data diversity that allows autonomy to generalize to new markets.

Robotaxi deployment with Uber

Uber participated in the Series D and has committed additional capital to support multi-year deployments of Wayve-powered robotaxis on the Uber network, with plans to scale to more than 10 markets globally. The companies plan to launch their first service in London in 2026, with broader international rollout to follow.

Under the partnership, Wayve will deploy its AI Driver in L4-capable vehicles from participating automakers, while Uber will own and operate the fleet, creating a scalable model for autonomous ride-hailing using mass-produced vehicles.

Autonomy for any vehicle, anywhere

End-to-end AI has shifted from a research bet to the industry's chosen path for scalable autonomy. Wayve has spent nearly a decade pioneering this technology into a production-grade platform that can power any vehicle, anywhere. As the industry converges on end-to-end AI, Wayve is positioned to lead its global deployment.

Alex Kendall, Co-Founder and CEO of Wayve, said: "With $1.5 billion secured, we are building for a total addressable market that spans every vehicle that moves. 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 everywhere."

Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft: "Wayve is pushing the frontier of embodied AI for autonomous driving, and Azure supports the scale, reliability, and safety needed to bring that innovation into the real world. Through our partnership and investment, we're helping accelerate the path from breakthrough research to scaled commercial deployment with automakers worldwide."

Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO, Uber, said: "We are very proud to continue to deepen our partnership with Wayve, with plans to deploy together in more than 10 markets around the world. Wayve's powerful end-to-end approach is purpose-built for scale, safety, and effectiveness, and we're excited to work with them across multiple OEMs and geographies, which we'll share more about soon."

Ivan Espinosa, President and CEO, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd, said: "This investment deepens our partnership with Wayve and supports Nissan's plans to advance autonomous driving through scalable end-to-end AI. By strengthening this collaboration, we are reinforcing our competitiveness in intelligent mobility and our focus on long-term value creation."

Antonio Filosa, CEO, Stellantis, said: "Wayve's embodied-AI approach and end-to-end learning architecture represent an important innovation in autonomous driving technology. Their work aligns well with Stellantis' platform-driven strategy and our focus on scalable, safety-first vehicle intelligence. We see strong potential for collaboration as we advance our autonomy roadmap, including our driverless AV Ready Platforms™, with the clear objective of delivering safer and more intuitive driving experiences for customers worldwide".

Seth Winterroth, Partner at Eclipse, said: "Wayve's end-to-end embodied AI approach appeared contrarian when Eclipse first backed the company in 2019. Today, it's clear this vision is the scalable path to deploying autonomy globally as we stand on the edge of a transportation shift that will transform how the world moves, works, and lives. This capital reinforces Wayve's leadership and positions the company to build one of the most valuable businesses of the next generation."

Kentaro Matsui, Managing Partner at SoftBank Global Advisers and Head of the New Business Office at SoftBank Group, said: "Wayve is building a scalable, end-to-end embodied AI platform that we believe will help define the future of mobility. We're proud to support their mission and look forward to deepening our partnership as Wayve accelerates global adoption of its autonomy platform."

Suranga Chandratillake, General Partner at Balderton, commented: "We've been proud to support Wayve since the early days, backing Alex and his team as they pursued an ambitious - and at the time rather contrarian - vision for embodied AI. The technical achievements are extraordinary, but what's more impressive is how this team has taken cutting-edge research out of the lab and deployed it in complex, real-world driving environments - turning breakthrough science into commercial reality. Born out of a tiny lab in Cambridge and now a global leader in its field, Wayve represents the very best of European innovation: world-class technology, global ambition and real-world deployment at scale."

Avid Larizadeh-Duggan, Head of EMEA for Teachers' Venture Growth, the late-stage venture investment platform of Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, said: "Wayve's approach to embodied AI marks a true step forward in how driving intelligence is trained, scaled and deployed. In a space with only a handful of serious contenders, their technical edge, pace of execution and trusted relationships with leading ecosystem partners set them apart. Alex and his team are formidable and we're proud to back them."

UK Technology Secretary of State Liz Kendall said: "Wayve is a powerful example of the strength, ambition and potential of Britain's innovative firms. This fund raise demonstrates the international confidence in our brilliant AI sector and reaffirms Britain's position as the leading scale-up ecosystem in Europe. We will continue to create the conditions for world-leading firms like Wayve to start, grow and scale, creating great jobs and opportunities for people in every corner of our country."

UK Business Secretary of State Peter Kyle said: "The growth of great British AI businesses like Wayve is a big vote of confi dence in the UK and in the future of our auto industry that will help to boost jobs and growth across the sector. We're proud to be backing this investment round, giving Wayve the fi repower to scale up and thrive. I can't wait to see more of their cars on the streets around the country and around the world in years to come."

Heidi Alexander, Secretary of State for Transport, said: "Wayve is pushing the boundaries of innovation right here in the UK, and this £1.5bn investment will cement the UK as a powerhouse for the next generation of transport.

"We're backing innovators with smarter regulation that unlocks growth, and giving firms like Wayve the opportunity to trial their driverless technology on our roads later this year."

To learn more about Wayve and its innovative approach to building Embodied AI for autonomous driving, please visit wayve.ai.

About Wayve

Founded in 2017, Wayve is a UK self-driving company pioneering embodied AI for autonomous driving. The company develops end-to-end AI software that enables vehicles to learn, perceive, understand, and navigate complex real-world environments.

Wayve's AV2.0 approach centers on a unified foundation model trained on large-scale, globally diverse data. Unlike traditional rule-based and map-dependent systems, Wayve's AI Driver is designed to generalize across markets and vehicle platforms without location-specific engineering.

Technology and Platform

Wayve builds and licenses its AI Driver as a vehicle-agnostic software platform that runs entirely on onboard vehicle compute and native sensors.

The same foundation model powers capabilities spanning from L2+ advanced driver assistance through L3 "eyes-off" and L4 driverless applications. Automakers can customize and continuously improve their driving models using Wayve's toolchains for fleet learning, data infrastructure, evaluation and simulation.

AI-500 Roadshow and Zero-shot performance

In 2025, Wayve conducted its AI-500 Roadshow, becoming the first and only AV company to test a single global AI Driver model across more than 500 cities in Europe, North America and Japan.

In machine learning, "zero-shot" refers to a model performing a task in a new domain without being retrained or fine-tuned on data from that specific domain. Using this definition, Wayve deployed its AI Driver zero-shot across all cities visited, with no city-specific fine-tuning prior to testing.

The AI Driver is distilled from Wayve's foundation model, trained on large-scale, globally diverse driving data. In 219 cities, the system had no prior local data. In 260 cities, it had fewer than 10 kilometres of local driving data, and in a further 81 cities, less than 100 kilometres.

Commercial Deployment

In 2025, Wayve signed a definitive production partnership with Nissan Motor Co. to integrate its AI Driver into Nissan's next-generation ProPILOT driver-assistance systems, with the first mass-produced vehicles expected to launch in Japan and other global markets from fiscal year 2027.

In 2025, Wayve and Uber announced plans to launch public robotaxi trials starting in London in 2026.

Contact

Wayve: [email protected]