Uber Invests in Wayve

By Nick Carey

LONDON (Reuters) – Ride-hailing platform Uber will invest in Wayve to help the British self-driving technology startup work with major automakers to speed up the development of its systems, the two companies announced on Thursday.

The companies did not disclose the size of the investment but confirmed it will supplement the $1.05 billion in Series C funding Wayve announced in May, which was led by SoftBank Group.

Wayve has developed “Embodied AI” technology that learns from and adapts to human behavior.

This funding will accelerate the development of Level 2 and Level 3 driver assistance and automated driving functions with automakers, while also working towards globally scalable Level 4 autonomous vehicles for future deployment on Uber.

Level 2 systems perform basic tasks autonomously, such as lane-keeping or maintaining distance from other cars. Level 3 cars can drive themselves but require the driver to stay attentive. Level 4 vehicles are capable of driving themselves under most circumstances and can make decisions in dangerous situations.

Despite progress in basic driver assistance functions, developing fully autonomous vehicles has proven to be more challenging and costly than anticipated. A key challenge is that self-driving software has struggled with quick risk assessment and prediction, especially in unexpected scenarios or edge cases where the vehicles struggle to determine the appropriate response.