Wayve and Uber announce partnership to advance the development of driverless vehicles

Wayve, a company working in technology to power autonomous vehicles that recently completed a Series C from SoftBank, NVIDIA, and Microsoft, is partnering with Uber to accelerate the future of driverless cars. Wayve's technology, like Tesla's, is a self-learning system that forgoes lidar sensors to use cameras and radar instead. However, instead of integrating its system into its cars like Tesla, Wayve makes hardware-agnostic systems that any vehicle manufacturer can incorporate into its products. The company's product portfolio comprises the AI Driver Assist, AI Driver CoPilot, and AI Driver.

Wayve's AI Driver Assist provides Level 2+ autonomy features, which offer a hands-free driving experience in which a human driver must be behind the wheel paying attention at all times. The other two products deliver Level 3 and 4 capabilities, making the vehicles completely driverless. Since Level 3 autonomy is only partial, vehicles equipped with the AI Driver CoPilot also require a human driver behind the wheel, even if they allow for a hands and eyes-free driving experience.

The main benefit for Wayve is that Uber will make a strategic investment in the company, thus extending the recently announced Series C funding round. This will allow Wayve to continue developing and refining its technology, leading to the accomplishment of the partnership's main goal: to equip vehicles with Wayve's self-driving technology and offer autonomous vehicle solutions (featuring up to Level 4 autonomy) in markets across the world through Uber's network, thus reaching Uber's 150 million monthly global users.