It’s the kind of crazily ambitious investment that seemingly only happens in Silicon Valley near the top of a hype cycle: a pre-product, lossmaking artificial intelligence start-up raises $1bn from SoftBank, Microsoft and Nvidia to fund a dizzying ambition for global domination. In fact, this deal was sealed in London last week when Wayve, which develops software for autonomous vehicles, announced Europe’s largest AI start-up fundraising.
If any British technology company is to match chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s desire to create a homegrown Microsoft over the next decade worth more than $1tn, then Wayve is probably as good a bet as any. As a global pioneer in the white-hot field of embodied AI — interacting and learning from the environment — Wayve could sell the software for millions of self-driving cars if it spends its money wisely and executes its plans impeccably. “Embodied AI is going to be a sector that produces trillion-dollar companies,” says Alex Kendall, Wayve’s co-founder and chief executive. “And certainly our ambition is to be one of those.”