Last month Nvidia signed a letter of intent with Wayve to look at the potential of a $500m investment in the company.
Nvidia and Wayve have a seven-year relationship. Nvidia invested in Wayve last year and they collaborate on developing Wayve’s technology which is based on Nvidia’s Drive AGX Thor technology. This is also used by China’s leading self-driving car company BYD.
Wayve’s AI software aims to get cars to understand human behaviour from real-world experience. Wayve’s technology mimics human driving through a combination of imitation learning (learning from recorded driving data), from the use of safety drivers (reinforcement learning) and from computer simulations of unusual or dangerous situations (simulation learning).
Wayve’s AI is designed as a foundation model capable of being applied to different countries, different road regulations and different vehicles with minimal additional training.
In June Uber and Wayve announced that they would be trialling self-driving cars in London, which has been picked because of its particularly complex driving environment.
Last year Wayve raised $1.05 billion from investors including Softbank, Nvidia and Microsoft, taking its total investment since its founding in 2017 to $1.3 billion. The reported new funding would up that to $3.8 billion.
