Wayve’s AI Self-Driving System Is Here to Drive Like a Human and Take on Waymo and Tesla

When I arrive, they are laying out an impressive lunch of salad and carved meats and cheese. There are already 385 lips to feed in London alone, and about 450 employees in total now, including in the new US headquarters and the testing center Wayve has just opened in Sunnyvale, California: Its first use in the group of Softbank funds. It may have flown under the radar until the funding for the title in May, but the startup started in 2017, and as an overnight success it’s been a long time coming.

The investment was seen as a clear sign that self-driving cars are coming out of “frustration” very common in technology where hype needs to translate into action. Some of the largest and most profitable companies have admitted that independence is the most difficult problem they are working on. Very difficult, sometimes: Among other things, appleUber and Volkswagen have abandoned AV programs in recent years.

But there is new hope for self-governance. In addition to Wayve’s partnership, Alphabet’s That’s it now offering 150,000 weekly rides in San Francisco, LA and Phoenix, and has just announced expansion into Austin and Atlanta starting early next year. Autonomous trucking service Aurora will soon make its first driverless tours in Texas. Tesla showed it recently Cybercabeven his half-hour establishing scene was tragic in detail. Mate Rimac’s autonomous ride-hailing service Vernewhich uses two beautiful chairs without a steering wheel or pedals that will be launched in Zagreb next year, and a dozen other cities have already been booked.

Wayve may not have anything like Waymo’s volume, budget, or miles driven. But this is Alex Kendall, who has the same thingElon a combination of messianic vision, drive, and the ability to “get into the weeds” of the problem. And Wayve takes a very different, autonomous approach to AI compared to Waymo, which will allow it to grow faster and more widely than its competitors.

“In 2017, when we started Wayve, we were at the peak of autonomous vehicles,” Kendall said. “Everyone was like, ‘Oh, it’s almost a year away, and it’s going to be magical.’ But I can see that the technology path that many are taking is not going to give us this future of intelligent machines that we all think of as a robotics problem and I think of it as an AI problem.