Chipmakers AMD, Arm, and Qualcomm invest $60M in Wayve's self-driving tech platform

Chipmakers AMD, Arm, and Qualcomm are all investing in this buzzy self-driving tech startup | TechCrunch

Chipmakers AMD, Arm, and Qualcomm have invested $60 million into UK self-driving technology startup Wayve as part of an extension to its recent $1.2 billion Series D funding round, the companies announced Wednesday. Wayve already brought in a who's who of strategic investors for its Series D round, including Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Stellantis, and returning backers Nvidia, Microsoft, and Uber. Other earlier investors like Eclipse, Balderton, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2 also joined the round, which could grow again; Uber has committed another $300 million in a milestone-based investment contingent on deploying robotaxis outfitted with Wayve's tech in London. The involvement of AMD, Arm, and the venture arm of Qualcomm is about more than money, though. It's also about tapping into the variety of compute platforms that Wayve's self-driving system will need to use. Wayve built a self-driving system that isn't reliant on specific sensors, chips, or high-definition maps. Instead, Wayve's software uses an end-to-end neural network that only uses data -- captured from whatever sensors are on the vehicle -- to direct and teach the vehicle how to drive. Wayve's software can also run on whatever chip its OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners already have in their vehicles. The startup's self-driving tech underpins two products that it is selling to automakers and tech companies. It developed an "eyes on" assisted-driving system, which requires the driver to remain attentive and ready to intervene, and an "eyes off" fully automated-driving system that can handle all of the driving in certain environments and be applied to robotaxis or consumer vehicles. The company has already landed several automaker customers. Nissan said it will integrate Wayve's technology into the advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) in its cars starting in 2027. Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis are also customers and plan to use Wayve's tech in future models. Wayve said the new investment will support integration across automotive compute platforms and continued deployment of the Wayve AI Driver in production systems for ADAS and automated driving. "For embodied AI to scale, automakers need design choice and supply chain flexibility," Wayve co-founder and CEO Alex Kendall said in the company's announcement. "Expanding our relationships with leading silicon companies helps bring that into production at a global scale."

Chip giants AMD, Qualcomm and Arm back driverless car startup Wayve with fresh funds

A prototype of the Nissan Motor Co. Leaf-based autonomous vehicle equipped with Wayve Technologies Ltd.'s AI Driver software and connected to Uber Technologies Inc.'s ride-hailing platform on display during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, on Thursday, March 12, 2026. British autonomous driving startup Wayve on Wednesday said it raised funds from Qualcomm, AMD and Arm, adding some of the biggest names in tech to its long list of backers as it takes on rivals like Alphabet's Waymo. The three semiconductor firms invested $60 million into Wayve, the company said on Wednesday, in a follow-on investment to the $1.2 billion funding round the driverless car company announced in February. While relatively small in size, the investment is strategic in nature. Wayve's technology is designed to make cars autonomous without the need for high-definition maps or massive amounts of training in a specific area, which is a different approach to competitors like Waymo. The U.K.-headquartered firm has designed its technology to work with any automaker. But different automakers use various chips to power their driverless cars, such as those designed by NVIDIA or Qualcomm. Arm and AMD are all involved in auto chips. In the $1.2 billion funding round from February, Wayve announced Nvidia as a backer. Now with all of the major semiconductor names on board, Wayve has scope to work more closely with the companies as it looks to commercialize its technology and sell it to more automakers.

Wayve extends its $1.2B round with $60M from AMD, Arm, and Qualcomm

The extension to Wayve's $1.2B Series D gives the London startup coverage across virtually every compute architecture in automotive use today, from chips already in millions of vehicles to the platforms powering the next generation. Robotaxi pilots with Uber are planned for London and Tokyo. Wayve, the London-based autonomous driving software company, has raised a further $60 million from AMD, Arm, and Qualcomm Ventures, extending its Series D round. The investment brings Wayve's total Series D to $1.2 billion and, combined with previous rounds, its total funding to approximately $1.5 billion at an $8.6 billion post-money valuation. The three chip companies join a Series D investor base that already includes SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Eclipse, Balderton, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Uber, and automakers Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Stellantis. The strategic significance of the new investors lies in coverage. AMD, Arm, and Qualcomm collectively span the automotive compute stack, from architectures already embedded in millions of production vehicles to those powering the next generation of autonomous systems. Together with NVIDIA, which joined the Series D in February, Wayve now has investment relationships with the four companies whose silicon underlies essentially every compute platform an automaker might deploy. For Wayve, whose core proposition is that its AI Driver runs across any vehicle and any hardware configuration without location-specific engineering, this hardware-agnostic investor base is a commercial signal as much as a financial one: it makes it easier for automakers to deploy Wayve without being tied to a specific compute vendor. Wayve was founded in 2017 by Alex Kendall, who remains co-founder and CEO, and takes an end-to-end AI approach to autonomous driving, training a single foundation model on large-scale, globally diverse driving data rather than relying on hand-coded rules or high-definition maps. The same model powers capabilities from L2+ "hands-off" ADAS through L3 "eyes-off" and L4 driverless applications, and the AI Driver runs entirely on onboard vehicle compute using native sensors. In 2025, Wayve conducted its AI-500 Roadshow, testing the AI Driver zero-shot, meaning without city-specific fine-tuning, across more than 500 cities in Europe, North America, and Japan. The new capital will support integration across automotive compute platforms and continued deployment in production ADAS and automated driving systems. It builds on two specific partnerships already in place. Wayve and Qualcomm Technologies announced a collaboration in March 2026 to deliver a pre-integrated AI Driver solution on the Snapdragon Ride Platform with Active Safety software, giving automakers a streamlined path to deploy Wayve's AI across Qualcomm's widely-used automotive SoCs. Wayve also has a longstanding relationship with NVIDIA: the Nissan robotaxi prototype shown at NVIDIA GTC in March 2026 was built on NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion, running the Wayve AI Driver on dual DRIVE AGX Thor processors. On the commercial side, Wayve signed a definitive production partnership with Nissan in 2025 to integrate the AI Driver into its next-generation ProPILOT driver-assistance systems, with the first mass-produced vehicles expected to launch in Japan and other markets from fiscal year 2027. In March 2026, Wayve, Uber, and Nissan signed a memorandum of understanding to run a robotaxi pilot in Tokyo starting in late 2026, subject to regulatory discussions, Uber's first autonomous vehicle partnership in Japan. Wayve and Uber also have plans for a London robotaxi trial, as part of a planned rollout spanning more than ten cities globally.