On 25 February 2026, London-based self-driving software specialist Wayve announced US$1.2 billion in new funding from a Series D investment round led by Eclipse, Balderton and SoftBank.
Alongside existing partners Microsoft, NVIDIA and Uber, it brings in the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Baillie Gifford, British Business Bank, Icehouse Ventures and Schroders Capital, among others.
Highlighting that Wayve’s AI Driver has now been tested in more than 500 cities across Europe, North America and Japan, CEO Alex Kendall, our 2023 Self-Driving Person Of The Year, welcomed the ‘convergence’ around their embodied AI approach.
Accelerating self-driving
“Autonomy will not scale through city-by-city robotaxi deployments alone,” he said. “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.”
That last word is important. In 219 cities, the Wayve system operated with no prior local knowledge. In 260 more, it did so with less than 10km of local data. In machine learning (ML) they call that a zero-shot – performing the self-driving task in a new domain without any previous location-specific fine-tuning.
The list of big hitters supporting Wayve’s platform, spanning hands-off driver assistance through to higher level automation, becomes ever more impressive.
Ministerial approval
Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, 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.”
Business Secretary, Peter Kyle, added:“The growth of great British AI businesses like Wayve is a big vote of confidence in the UK and in the future of our auto industry. We’re proud to be backing this investment round, giving Wayve the firepower 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.”
Tech support
Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, said: “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.”
Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said: “We are very proud 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.”
VM partners
Stellantis CEO, Antonio Filosa, 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.”
President of Nissan, Ivan Espinosa, 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.”
Financial backing
Seth Winterroth, Partner at Eclipse, said:“Wayve’s end-to-end embodied AI approach appeared contrarian when we 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, 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, concluded: “We’ve been proud to support Wayve since the early days. 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.”
Wayve at AV Summit
Those heading to London for next month’s European AV Summit can find out more from Wayve’s Kaity Fischer. If you haven’t booked yet, you can apply this Cars Of The Future code to get 25% off. See you there!
