Autonomous vehicles scaleup Wayve will raise $500m from tech giant Nvidia, the company has said, in the latest in a string of UK funding announcements from the US chip giant.
One of the UK's leading AI startups, the fresh capital will take Wayve’s total funding to $1.8bn.
Wayve declined to comment on when the cash would hit its accounts, but last raised in a $1.1bn round from Microsoft, SoftBank and Nvidia in May 2024.
Founded in 2017, the past 12 months have seen Wayve — which is developing self-driving software for carmakers — rapidly scale up its commercial operations, inking deals with carmakers in Japan, Uber and announcing expansion to Germany.
“Continued support from a global technology leader like Nvidia underscores confidence in our AV2.0 approach to building embodied AI and its potential to transform the future of mobility,” Alex Kendall, cofounder and CEO of Wayve, said in a statement.
Wayve has over 400 employees across the US, UK, Canada, Germany and Japan, with plans to double its headcount by the end of the year across all business functions.
The raise comes on the back of a flurry of US tech investment in the UK ecosystem. Earlier this week the UK government announced it had struck a £31bn deal with the US which includes backing from Google, OpenAI and Nvidia to bolster Britain's AI infrastructure.
Nvidia said it plans to invest £2bn into UK AI startups on Thursday.
The company did not say over what time period it would deploy the capital, but Huang announced on Thursday it would be investing in the next rounds of a host of the UK's most hyped scaleups.
Synthesia, Oxa, PolyAI, Basecamp Research, Latent Labs and Revolut would all be recipients, Huang said.
