Nvidia is considering a $500 million strategic investment in British self-driving technology company Wayve as part of its broader pledge to back artificial intelligence startups in the United Kingdom.
Wayve said it has signed a letter of intent with Nvidia to evaluate the investment in its next funding round. The startup, which raised $1.05 billion in a Series C round in May with Nvidia among the backers, confirmed the potential investment is part of Nvidia’s £2 billion ($2.6 billion) AI funding commitment announced this week.
During an event in London, Nvidia said the pledge would involve venture capital firms including Accel, Air Street Capital, Balderton, Hoxton Ventures and Phoenix Court. The U.S. chipmaker did not comment on the letter of intent with Wayve.
Founded in 2017, Wayve develops autonomous driving software that relies on self-learning neural networks rather than rules-based systems and detailed maps. Its platform, designed to work with standard sensors such as cameras and radar, aims to deliver both assisted and fully automated driving.
Wayve has partnered with Nvidia since 2018 and uses the company’s hardware across its systems. Its second-generation platform, deployed in Ford Mach-E test vehicles, runs on Nvidia GPUs, while the newly unveiled third-generation system integrates Nvidia’s Drive AGX Thor compute platform to support advanced driver-assistance and Level 4 autonomous driving features.