British driverless car start-up Wayve raises $1bn
Wayve, a British driverless car company, has raised over a billion dollars from three of the world’s most influential tech companies to commercialise its products.
Led by investor SoftBank, with contributions from Nvidia and Microsoft, the funds will help develop the start-up’s artificial intelligence software, which can make any vehicle hands-free.
It is the biggest venture investment to date in a European AI start-up.
The $1.05 billion series C funding round could value the London headquartered company at several billion dollars, although the business and investors would not discuss the figures.
Wayve was founded in 2017 by Cambridge University PhD students Alex Kendall, 31, and Amar Shah in a garage. The pair, who researched machine learning, computer vision and robotics, wanted to explore a different approach to developing driverless cars.
Rather than feeding computers rules to account for every driving eventuality, its technology “teaches” autonomous vehicles how to drive, using videos and data from real life, collected by partners including Asda and Ocado.
This means vehicles can navigate any environment they are in and are more responsive to the unexpected occurrences which happen while driving, such as someone running out into the road or another vehicle swerving.
• Cambridge helps academics take punt on commercialising research
“It is general purpose driving intelligence, agnostic to a specific vehicle or domain,” Kendall said. “There’s work to get it integrated into vehicles, and we’re working with a number of leading car companies to make that possible.”
Part of the challenge is teaching autonomous vehicles about consequences “to understand the implications of their decisions. How pedestrians and cyclists might react to our behaviour and vice versa, making sure that we understand how scenarios are going to unfold so that we can behave in a way that’s safe”.
Kendall added: “The funding will allow us to scale up these capabilities and take it from a demonstration to a proven and robust product. It’s pretty magic to have the opportunity to take technology we’ve developed and get it shipped around the world. Not many deep technology companies get to do that”.
Inside the boot, the cars have a computer, about the same size as the tower of a desktop computer. The rest of the “brain” is behind the dashboard, and there are six cameras around the edge of the car which allows it to “see” where it is going.
Reflecting on the company’s early days Suranga Chandratillake, a partner at Balderton Capital and one of Wayve’s first investors, said: “They were a smart team in a sleepy university city, cracking a seemingly intractable problem with next to no money. It was a compelling, contrarian concept. Exactly what everyone in venture capital dreams of discovering”.
Kentaro Matsui, managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, who has taken a seat on Wayve’s board as part of the investment, said Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s founder, was personally involved: “We have a vision of a peaceful world, free from traffic accidents. Once we learnt that we shared a common vision, our team members and Masa were excited and felt we needed to help. We are very proud that we are taking part in this effort.”
The company complements others in the investor’s portfolio, which reads: “Ride hailing, mapping, telematics, we have so many companies in this sector. We also have an extensive network of technology companies and we are already making introductions to help accelerate its growth.”
Wayve has offices in London, California and Vancouver and employs 290 people, its headquarters are in Kings Cross, London,which has become a magnet for some of the world’s leading AI companies including Google DeepMind and Meta.
The company has many high-profile backers including Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist, and Sir Richard Branson. Shah left the business in 2019.
It has steadily raised capital over the past five years, with a series A round of $20 million in 2019 and a series B round in 2022 of $200 million, both led by Eclipse with other investors including Balderton, Ocado, D1 Capital Partners and Virgin.
Partnering with Microsoft and Nvidia gives the company access to the computer power necessary to process vast amounts of data. Kendall said: “The scale of infrastructure you need just goes far beyond anything we’ve seen in the AI space so far.”
Kendall, who hails from New Zealand, is “a once in a generation brain”, Chandratillake said. “He could have stayed in academia, drawing equations on a board, instead he has become an amazing leader, building a world-changing business”.
Wayve’s cars, marked “vehicle under test, keep your distance” are able to drive around London’s roads, with a safety driver behind the wheel. They are yet to have an incident, the company says.
There is growing optimism about the future of autonomous vehicles which could be on UK roads as soon as 2026, Mark Harper, the transport secretary, has said. The Automated Vehicles (AV) Bill announced in the King’s speech in November, set out a legal and safety framework for the technology and is currently in the final stages, before it reaches royal assent.
Last year, Elon Musk changed his strategy to adopt the same method as Wayve at Tesla, collecting vast amounts of driving data into a supercomputer called Dojo. Other competitors include Waymo, owned by Alphabet, and Mobileye.
In the US, robotaxis already operate in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Francisco, although not without incident. In November Cruise, owned by General Motors pulled all of its automated vehicles from the road after a pedestrian was dragged by a car.
The UK government believes driverless cars could cut road deaths and injuries by lessening those caused by people who drive drunk, speed or use mobile phones at the wheel, for example. Official statistics show that human error is a contributing factor in 88 per cent of road collisions.
“Ultimately it is this technology that will drive road accidents and road deaths close to zero,” Kendall said.
Cambridge is not invested in the business.
Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, said: “I’m incredibly proud that the UK is the home for pioneers like Wayve. We already have the third highest number of AI companies and private investment in AI in the world, and this announcement anchors the UK’s position as an AI superpower.”
A surreal, blood-pressure rocketing experience — but great fun
Driving in London is a nightmare. So I get into the passenger seat of Wayve’s automated Jaguar iPace with more than a little trepidation, unsure how I feel about letting a computer navigatethe dangers of our chaotic, crowded capital (Katie Prescott writes).
My life is in the hands of artificial intelligence; the brain is software stored on computers in the glove compartment and boot while the eyes are cameras fixed around the car’s body. There is nothing artificial about Darren, the safety driver sitting next to me; a stipulation of letting the car loose. His hands hover under the steering wheel, resolutely not touching it.
As we set off into the rainy roads around King’s Cross, the wheel eerily turns by itself which takes a while to get used to. The car niftily negotiates a narrow lane between a set of roadworks and a lorry — the sort which would prompt my father to say “breathe in!”.
The car behaves in a strangely human-like way. It moves with confidence through the red and white barriers filtering the road to one lane and then slows at the traffic lights, before smoothly taking off at green. Darren is still just sitting there, no hands.
“Idiot!”I can’t help but shout, as a man opens his car door in front of us, an occurrence which feels even more alarming than usual. The Jaguar gently swerves past.
Then my stomach lurches a man stumbles off the electric bike he’s trying to rent, into the road ahead. I stamp my foot onto an invisible brake but our car nips round him with confidence.
The whole experience is surreal and great fun. Yes, this short journey of hazard spotting sent my blood pressure rocketing, but the car proved itself capable of staying safe — an improvement on many drivers you see on London roads, though I’m not sure how I’d feel without Darren’s poised hands.
No comments:
Post a Comment