Wayve, the self-driving car start-up launching autonomous taxis on UK roads, are in talks to raise over $1bn in one of largest funding rounds ever for a British AI start-up

Founded in Cambridge in 2017, the company is one of a group of tech businesses racing to launch self-driving taxi pilots on UK roads in the coming months. It has a deal with Uber to launch a trial of its technology in the ride-hailing company’s vehicles later this year, according to the Telegraph.

Nvidia, the US AI chip giant, announced last year that it was in talks about a potential $500m investment in Wayve as part of its upcoming funding round. A source said Wayve was expected to raise more than $1bn at a valuation of nearly $9bn. Another source said talks were still at an early stage.

Wayve, which is led by New Zealand-born entrepreneur Alex Kendall, is already one of the UK’s best-funded technology businesses. In 2024, the company secured $1bn in funding from Japan’s SoftBank and Microsoft for its driverless software.

Since then, the UK business has started expanding its technology globally, launching testing in San Francisco and Germany and signing a deal with Nissan to expand into Japan.

However, the company’s rivals have been expanding aggressively and planning their own driverless trials in Britain.

Waymo raised $16bn in new funding last week to expand its robotaxi services. The AI ride-hailing business already serves a cluster of cities in the US and is planning to expand to the UK later this year.

(Picture: Wayve)