Nvidia Considers $500 Million Investment in Autonomous Driving AI Firm Wayve

Nvidia is evaluating a $500 million investment in Wayve, a developer of embodied artificial intelligence for autonomous vehicles.

Wayve said in a Thursday (Sept. 18) press release that it has signed a letter of intent with Nvidia to evaluate the investment ahead of Wayve’s next funding round.

The companies have collaborated since 2018, with Wayve’s robot platforms using Nvidia technology, and Nvidia participated in Wayve’s $1.05 billion Series C funding round in May 2024.

Together, they aim to provide automakers with production-ready autonomous driving technology that combines Wavye’s foundation model and Nvidia’s automotive-grade accelerated computing platforms, according to the release.

The next Wayve platform, Wayve Gen 3, will be built on Nvidia Drive AGX Thor, per the release.

“Continued support from a global technology leader like Nvidia underscores confidence in our AV2.0 approach to building embodied AI and its potential to transform the future of mobility,” Wayve Co-founder and CEO Alex Kendall said in the release.

AV2.0 is Wayve’s term for self-driving technology that learns to drive in any environment by experience, rather than explicit programming, according to the company’s website.

In a Tuesday (Sept. 16) press release outlining its collaborations with U.K. robotics leaders, Nvidia said Wayve is “pioneering end-to-end deep learning for autonomous driving.”

“Its next-generation AV2.0 Platform enables vehicles to quickly and safely adapt its driving intelligence to new, unseen environments without needing expensive sensors and high-definition maps,” Nvidia said.

Wayve’s May 2024 Series C funding round was led by SoftBank Group, with contributions from Nvidia and Microsoft.

Rishi Dhall, vice president of automotive business at Nvidia, said at the time in a press release: “Wayve is pioneering new AI applications for their next-generation AV2.0 approach, built on Nvidia Drive Orin and Drive Thor, which uses the new Nvidia Blackwell architecture designed for transformer, LLM and generative AI workloads. Together, we can help enable self-driving vehicles that deliver the intelligence, dependability and skill of the best human drivers.”

It was reported in May that Nvidia unveiled more than 70 research papers showing how AI can perform in real-world settings beyond text and images. With these papers, the company aims to advance embodied intelligence, or AI that can perceive, reason and act in industries including manufacturing, biotechnology and transportation.

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.