UK startup Wayve begins testing self-driving tech in Nissan cars on Tokyo's streets

"British startup Wayve has begun testing self-driving cars with Nissan in Japan ahead of a 2027 launch to consumers, as the company said it was in talks for a $500m investment from the chip-maker Nvidia. Wayve, based in London, said it had installed its self-driving technology on Nissan's electric Ariya vehicles and tested them on Tokyo's streets, after first agreeing a deal with the Japanese carmaker in April."

"Wayve on Friday said Nvidia, the world's most valuable listed company, thanks to the AI boom, had signed a letter of intent for a possible $500m investment in Wayve's next funding round. The startup has already raised $1.3bn from investors including Japan's SoftBank to fund its expansion in the US, Germany and Japan, as well as in London."

"Kendall, 33, a New Zealander, founded Wayve in 2017 after studying deep learning for computer vision and robotics at the University of Cambridge. We want to build a trillion-dollar company, Kendall said. He added that the company had reached a real inflection point in the capabilities of this technology that allowed it to learn rapidly how to deal with Tokyo's crowded streets."

Wayve has installed its AI-based self-driving technology on Nissan Ariya electric vehicles and tested them on Tokyo streets as part of preparations for a 2027 consumer launch. The startup is in talks with Nvidia over a potential $500m investment and Nvidia supplies chips both in cars and in datacentres that train Wayve's foundation driving model on extensive video datasets. Wayve has raised $1.3bn from investors including SoftBank to fund expansion in the US, Germany, Japan and London. Founder Alex Kendall aims to scale deep-learning models that learn to handle crowded urban driving.

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