Driverless car start-up Wayve gets Richard Branson’s backing as it targets US rivals

A Cambridge driverless car start-up that has emerged as one of Britain’s brightest prospects in the cutting edge sector has secured backing from Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group as it seeks to accelerate its plans.  

Wayve Technologies, founded by 28-year-old Alex Kendall with Amar Shah, is building artificial intelligence technology that uses machine learning techniques pioneered by DeepMind to improve self-driving cars. 

Its latest funding sees it secure a further $20m (£15m) from current and new investors. 

According to Mr Kendall, its chief executive, Wayve’s technology could leapfrog US giants such as Google’s Waymo and Uber.   

Mr Kendall said: “The incumbents started off the back of DARPA [the US defence agency] challenges in the mid 2000s. I think those challenges set the industry back about 10 years.”  

The DARPA challenges, hosted in the Nevada desert, focused on “rules and maps” programming for driverless cars — essentially drawing invisible lines across detail maps — rather than machine learning. While good for basic driving, the machines are relatively dumb. Wayve, according to Mr Kendall, uses AI that learns to drive like a human, analysising the behaviours of real drivers.   

Wayve, which has just 65 staff, has raised more than $44m. Its latest deal, a previously unannounced $20m round, saw funding from Balderton Capital, US fund Eclipse, Facebook AI expert Yann Le Cun and Sir Richard’s Virgin Group, according to data provider Pitchbook.   

Chief executive Alex Kendall (left) with Wayve's old self-driving Twizy

Credit: Wayve

The internal round is just the latest high tech bet from Sir Richard’s company, which is a major investor in Hyperloop One, which is hoping to build a science fiction alternative to rail, and the owner of space tourism company Virgin Galactic. 

A Virgin Group spokesperson said: “Virgin has a long history of investing in disruptive technology. We are excited by the promise of automation and particularly the positive impact self-driving vehicles could have on society. We’re delighted to be investors in Wayve — the strength of the team and traction shown to date makes for an exciting future.”

Started out of a garage in Cambridge, Wayve now has an office in London has upgraded its fleet or Renault Twizy self-driving cars to Jaguar i-Pace models that are being tested on the capital’s streets.   

“We are the only company using deep learning for driving,” Mr Kendall said. He claims Waymo is capable of “the most complex autonomous driving you can see demonstrated”.  

In the US, the grids and “boulevards and lanes” of Waymo’s tests in Phoenix, Arizona, are a far cry from the complex nature of Europe’s winding streets, according to Mr Kendall.  

“We’ve seen tens of billions of dollars of investment over ten years [for US companies] get to one city with brute force,” he said. “That will get them to a few more cities over a few years. But their robot is not economically viable. It gets you to simple environments like Mountain View. For New York, Berlin or London — in three to five years machine learning technology will eclipse those technologies.”  

Mr Kendall, a former Cambridge PHD, currently runs the business from New Zealand working overnight, but plans to return to the UK for its next trials.