Wayve has raised $1.5 billion in Series D funding backing its shift from research to commercial robotaxi and AI-driven autonomy.

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London-based autonomous driving startup Wayve has closed a $1.5 billion Series D funding round, raising its valuation to approximately $8.6 billion. The round was led by Eclipse, Balderton, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with strategic backing from Microsoft, NVIDIA, Uber, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Stellantis. Founded in 2017 by Cambridge researchers, Wayve differentiates itself with an 'embodied AI' approach that learns from driving data and generalizes across cities without extensive local tuning — tested in over 500 cities in 2025. The capital will fund commercial robotaxi trials with Uber in London this year, international expansion to 10+ markets in 2026, and supervised autonomy software for consumer vehicles starting in 2027 via partnerships like Nissan. Rather than building its own fleet, Wayve licenses adaptable AI software to partners.

Wayve raises $1.5 Billion in Series D to scale its autonomous driving AI