NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang landed in the UK this week and pledged to invest 2 billion pounds ($2.6 billion) to enhance the country’s AI startup ecosystem. The company told TechCrunch that U.K.-based autonomous driving technology startup Wayve may be one of the people who have received funding from NVIDIA’s AI investment commitments.
Wayve said it has signed a letter of intent with NVIDIA to assess the $500 million strategic investment in the next round of funding for UK startups. NVIDIA participated in Wayve’s $1.05 billion Series C, which closed in May 2024.
A Wayve spokesman confirmed the $500 million tentative commitment is part of the NVIDIA AI startup investment commitment.
NVIDIA said at Thursday’s event £2 billion promise Funds will include venture capitalists joining Air Street Capital, Balderton, Hoxton Ventures and Phoenix Court. A NVIDIA spokesperson declined to comment on the letter of intent announcement.
Wayve co-founder and CEO Alex Kendall will not provide TechCrunch with an expected D-season deadline. Kendall did say the company was “working hard”.
Wayve, launched in 2017, has attracted attention and investors from its autonomous driving system, which uses self-taught methods and rules-based approaches to implement its autonomous driving software. Wayve’s end-to-end neural network does not require high-definition graphics, but uses only data to teach the vehicle how to drive. This data-driven learning method is used for “eye” assisted driving and “eye close” fully autonomous driving systems.
The company plans to sell its “embodied AI” to automakers and other tech companies.
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Wayve’s self-learning approach is similar to the strategy Tesla uses and is considered particularly attractive to automakers because it does not rely on specific sensors or maps. This means Wayve’s system can be used with existing sensors such as cameras and radars. Autonomous driving software captures data from these sensors, which directly informs the system’s driving decisions.
While Wayve’s software can run any chips its OEM partners already own in the vehicle, the startup has established a close development relationship with NVIDIA since 2018.
Wayve’s 2nd Generation Self-driving Platform (integrated to its Ford Mach E test vehicle) uses an NVIDIA GPU. This week, the startup unveiled Gen 3, a platform that uses an on-board computing self-driving car development kit called NVIDIA DRIVE AGX THOR. Gen 3 will allow the road to provide advanced driving assistance systems and level 4 driverless features that will operate on city streets and highways.
Nvidia, Huang in particular, seems eager to be part of Wayve’s future.
Huang said in a video: “The next trillion dollar company, you guys,” he said on a vehicle equipped vehicle on London’s public streets. The video is viewed by TechCrunch and is scheduled to be released soon, showing Huang gave Kendall to the Thor Developer Kit.
“We picked him up from his hotel and drove through some very busy streets including Hyde Park Corner in central London, and that’s this huge round here,” Kendall said in an interview on Friday. “I really liked the experience, it was cool, showing him what we’ve been building due to Nvidia’s platform for years.”
