Wayve: Loss widens at British AI darling backed by Nvidia, Microsoft and Softbank
Wayve, the British artificial intelligence (AI) start-up that secured an investment of more than £800m recently, lost more than £40m during its latest financial year.
The London-based company hit the headlines in May 2024 when its Series C investment round was led by Japanese tech giant Softbank along with Nvidia and existing investor Microsoft.
The move was the UK’s largest ever AI fundraise and came after Wayve had already partnered with delivery fleets from Asda and Ocado.
Founded in 2017, the startup has been integrating its technology, called ‘embodied AI’, into cars and robots, transforming them into autonomous vehicles that it says can see, think, and drive through any environment.
Now, newly-filed documents with Companies House show that Wayve’s pre-tax losses widened from £23.5m to £41.1m in the 12 months to August 31, 2023.
Wayve is still in its research and development phase and does not yet generate revenue or profit. It relies on equity investment to fund its operations.
A statement signed off by the board said: “In the financial year, the group continued towards its mission of unlocking autonomy for everyone, everywhere.
“The group achieved meaningful improvements in autonomous riving performance during the period.
“This was underpinned by work in previous years to build solid foundations within the robotics platform, as well as building larger AI models trained on more data.
“The group also continued to build commercial traction with the launch of its commercial grocery pilot project with Asda – the largest autonomous delivery trial in Europe covering more than 70,000 households in London.
“Wayve continued to demonstrate progress in its AI platform with the launch of its GAIA model – the first generative AI model for synthetic text-to-video world generation.”
During the year the average number of people employed by Wayve increased from 134 to 202.