Financial Associated Press (Shanghai, editor Zhao Hao) news, the latest round of financing of the British self-driving startup Wayve, a total of 258 million US dollars, and received support from a number of big-name companies, including the well-known Microsoft, Virgin and Baillie Gifford.
Wayve did not disclose its new valuation, but the outside world estimates that it is likely to have exceeded $1 billion, making it a so-called "unicorn" company.
"Different" autonomous driving systems
Founded in London in 2017, Wayve works to build an AI-based autonomous driving system. The company's co-founder Alex Kendall said that Wayve's approach is "different" compared to existing self-driving companies.
Kendall said traditional self-driving companies will focus on telling cars how to drive with "hand-coded" rules and "very complex hardware stacks," which can sometimes include 8 LiDAR (laser imaging detection and ranging) sensors, 6 radars and 30 cameras.
(Traditional autonomous driving system Source: Wayve official website)
This approach could work in places like Phoenix, Arizona, where the sun is almost always sunny and there are wide boulevards in grid-like structures, kendall notes that it may not be scalable elsewhere, such as London, where rain and fog are more numerous.
Wayve, on the other hand, tries to teach cars how to drive themselves with fewer cameras and machine learning software, and the company calls its technology "AV2.0."
(AV2.0 Source: Wayve website)
Kendall said: "It is able to learn more complex things than hand coding, the car can 'see the world for itself' through the company's computer vision platform, it can make its own decisions based on what it sees, and drive in very complex environments, such as in central London." ”
Wayve stressed that deep learning can play an important role in autonomous driving. The system tries to mimic the activity of neurons in the brain, learning how to recognize data.
Wayve has chosen to license its self-driving technology to commercial fleets that have yet to be sold to the public. According to Kendall, "Due to the complexity of fully autonomous vehicles, it is difficult for consumers to maintain. ”
Expansion plans
Wayve is working to hire the world's leading AI scientists to help companies build their own platforms. But these people are currently the most expensive talent in the world, and some of the advanced talent in the field is said to be earning more than $1 million a year. Kendall said: "We focus on the quality of our employees, not the quantity. Our biggest investment is in our people. ”
To date, Wayve has hired about 120 people in its offices in London and California, including some industry figures, including former DeepMind research scientist Chris Burgess, former Waymo principal engineer Dan McCloskey and former Tesla software engineer Joe Polin.
In this round, Wayve raised more than $258 million and was backed by several prominent technology leaders. Kendall said, "This fundraising marks a shift in how the market perceives us. ”
Microsoft will also join as an investor, and Wayve plans to use Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform to provide it with the compute and storage capabilities needed to run autonomous driving development, test workloads, and conduct machine learning experiments.
(Ocado's van fleet Source: Wayve.com)
Last year, Wayve announced a commercial partnership with Ocado, Asda and DPD, which operate fleets of vans. Kendall revealed that the companies now plan to equip some of their vehicles with Wayve's self-driving system this year.
"If you live in London, you'll be able to receive groceries delivered by our AV2.0 self-driving technology," Kendall added, adding that there will still be a Wayve safety operator on the transport.