Wayve CEO and co-founder Alex Kendall.
Wave
LONDON – Uber and British artificial intelligence startup Wayve announced a partnership Thursday that will see the two companies collaborate on autonomous driving technology.
As part of the deal, Uber also invested an undisclosed amount into Wayve for a minority stake, the company said in a statement. The investment is in addition to Wayve’s $1 billion Series C funding round announced earlier this year, led by Japanese technology investors. SoftBank.
US chip maker Nvidia and software giants Microsoft also invested in Wayve’s Series C.
“Wayve is building a ‘general purpose’ driving Al that can power all levels of driving automation in any type of vehicle, anywhere in the world,” said Alex Kendall, founder and CEO of Wayve, in the statement.
He said that, along with Uber, Wayve is “excited to work with Automotive OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to bring autonomous driving technology to consumers faster.”
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi added that the two companies “share a vision to transform mobility for the better.”
“Wave’s advanced Embodied AI approach holds a lot of promise as we work toward a world where modern vehicles are shared, electric and autonomous,” Khosrowshahi said.
Uber will integrate Wayve’s AV2.0 technology — an algorithm-based product that allows vehicles to drive themselves using data from their physical environment — into consumer vehicles “to enable a range of self-driving capabilities,” according to the statement.
Wayve’s AV2.0 product is an end-to-end AI solution that allows automakers to equip their existing vehicles with Level 2+ driver assistance and Level 3 and 4 automated driving capabilities.
Different levels of vehicle autonomy are defined by SAE International, the global standards body for the mobility engineering industry.
In the future, Uber intends to launch self-driving vehicles in the app equipped with Wayve technology, the company said.
Previously, Uber had a self-driving car unit, but sold that division in 2020 to Aurora Technologies, an Amazon-backed self-driving car company. As part of the deal, Uber said it would invest $400 million into Aurora.
The ride-sharing giant announced last week a similar tie-up with Cruise, the autonomous driving startup backed by General Motors, to offer driverless rides on its ride-hailing network.
Uber has also offered rides in vehicles operated by Waymo, Google’s self-driving spinoff, as part of a commercial tie-up. In 2019, Waymo announced a similar partnership with Uber competitor Lyft.
