The CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, went down to the United Kingdom this week, armed with a commitment to invest 2 billion pounds sterling (2.6 billion dollars) to overeat the ia startups of the country. Wayve, the autonomous technological startup based in the United Kingdom, could be one of them to receive funds from the NVIDIA IA investment commitment, the company told Techcrunch.
Wayve said he signed a letter of intent with NVIDIA to assess a strategic investment of $ 500 million in the next British startup round. Nvidia participated in the C series of $ 1.05 billion in Wayve which closed in May 2024.
A Wayve spokesperson confirmed that the provisional commitment of $ 500 million was part of the starting of NVIDIA AI start-up investment.
NVIDIA said at an event on Thursday that the commitment of 2 billion pounds Sterling would include funds from Investors-Capital-Capital Accel, Air Street Capital, Balderton, Hoxton Ventures and Phoenix Court. A spokesperson for Nvidia refused to comment on the announcement of the letter of intent.
The co-founder and CEO of Wayve, Alex Kendall, would not provide Techcrunch with a closing date provided for his series D. Kendall said that the company “worked quickly”.
Wayve, launched in 2017, drew attention and investors for its automated driving system which uses an approach based on self-learning against rules of its autonomous software. The end -to -end neural network does not require high definition cards and only uses data to teach the vehicle how to drive. This data -based learning approach is used for “Eyes ON” assisted driving and a fully automated automated driving system.
The company plans to sell its “embodied AI” to automakers and other technological companies.
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Wayve’s self-learning approach, which is similar to the strategy used by Tesla, is considered particularly attractive for car manufacturers because it does not depend on specific sensors or cards. This means that the Wayve system can work with existing sensors such as cameras and radar. The automated driving software captures data from these sensors, which directly informs system driving decisions.
And although Wayve software can work on the chip that its OEM partners have already in their vehicles, the startup has had a close development relationship with Nvidia since 2018.
Wayve’s autonomous generation 2 independent platform, which is integrated into its Ford Mach e test vehicles, uses NVIDIA GPUs. This week, the startup has unveiled generation 3, a platform that uses the Development Kit of Autonomous Vehicle Calculation Vehicle called Nvidia Drive AGX Thor. The Gen 3 will allow Wayve to offer advanced driving assistance systems and level 4 driver -free characteristics that will operate on city streets and highways.
Nvidia, and in particular Huang, seems eager to be part of the future of Wayve.
“The next company of billions of dollars, you guys,” said Huang in a video featuring his first trip in a vehicle equipped with Wayve in the public streets of London. The video, which has been viewed by Techcrunch and should be published soon, shows Huang, who puts Kendall Nvidia’s Thor Developer Kit.
“We picked it up from his hotel and went to make a trip to the center of London in very lively streets, including Hyde Park Corner – this is this huge roundabout here,” Kendall said in an interview on Friday. “I really loved this experience, and it was cool to show him what we have always built after the Nvidia platform over the years.”
