Autonomous Driving - big money and (I think) still big questions

It is early days in the race for the dominance in the autonomous driving space, but Europe has secured an interesting deal this week.

UK autonomous vehicle startup Wayve has raised a $1.05bn Series C round led by new investor SoftBank, also featuring Nvidia and existing backer Microsoft. It brings the startup’s total funding to $1.26bn

Whilst there are obviously a few major players in this space (Alphabet-backed Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise as examples) Wayve has announced a feature of their technology that could become a clear differentiator in the future. The firm has developed a new AI model that helps explain (something that’s seen as key to building public trust in AVs) and determine driving behaviour. It combines a vision model, which makes sense of what the sensors “see”, and a language model, which helps users interact with the technology. 

We at Hyperion follow the mobility space closely and look forward to supporting start ups in this space as well.