UK-based autonomous driving technology company Wayve has raised $1.2bn in a Series D funding round to accelerate the deployment of its autonomous driving technology.

The investment brings the company’s total capital secured to $1.5bn and increases its post-money valuation to $8.6bn.

Eclipse, Balderton, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led the round, with new participation from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Baillie Gifford, British Business Bank, Icehouse Ventures, Schroders Capital and other global investors.

Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Uber, along with automotive manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Stellantis, have also contributed to this initiative.

The funding will help Wayve transition from research to the commercial deployment of its comprehensive AI platform for autonomous vehicles.

Wayve aims to launch commercial robotaxi trials with Uber in London by 2026 and plans to expand services to more than ten international markets.

From 2027, automakers are expected to offer passenger vehicles equipped with Wayve’s AI Driver system for supervised autonomy.

Wayve licenses its AI Driver technology directly to car manufacturers, allowing them to customise the software for specific models without relying on high-definition maps or location-based engineering. The system operates using onboard vehicle computing and embedded sensors.

By focusing on partnerships with automakers and mobility companies rather than producing its own vehicles, Wayve seeks to enable large-scale adoption of autonomous driving.

Over the past year, Wayve reported that it became the first autonomous vehicle developer to achieve so-called zero-shot driving, deploying its systems in over 500 cities across Europe, North America and Japan without city-specific fine-tuning in advance.

The company credits this performance to a foundation model trained on data from more than 70 countries and multiple vehicle platforms.

Wayve co-founder and CEO Alex Kendall said: “With $1.5bn secured, we are building for a total addressable market that spans every vehicle that moves.

“Autonomy will not scale through city-by-city robotaxi deployments alone. It will scale through a trusted platform that automakers and fleets can deploy globally and improve continuously.

“This investment accelerates our path to widespread commercial deployment and positions us to build the autonomy layer that will power any vehicle, anywhere.”

Uber has committed additional milestone-based funding as part of a multi-year agreement to deploy Wayve-powered robotaxis on its network globally.

Under this partnership, Uber will manage fleet operations while Wayve’s AI Driver will be installed in L4-capable vehicles provided by participating automakers.

Since its founding in 2017, Wayve has developed an industrialised architecture for autonomous driving based on end-to-end AI and has advanced from research into scalable commercial applications.