A prototype of a Nissan Motor Co Leaf-based autonomous vehicle equipped with Wave Technologies Ltd’s AI driver software and connected to Uber Technologies Inc’s ride-hailing platform is displayed during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, Thursday, March 12, 2026.
Kiyoshi Ota Bloomberg | getty images
British autonomous driving startup Wave said on Wednesday it has raised funding Qualcomm, amd And Handis adding some of the biggest names in the tech sector to its long list of backers as it takes on rivals alphabetWaymo’s.
Three semiconductor firms invested $60 million in Wave, a follow-up to a $1.2 billion funding round the driverless car company announced in February, the company said Wednesday.
Despite being relatively small in size, the investment is strategic in nature.
Wave’s technology is designed to make cars autonomous without the need for high-definition maps or massive amounts of training in a specific area, which is a different approach to competitors like Waymo.
The UK-headquartered firm has designed its technology to work with any automaker. But different automakers use different chips to power their driverless cars, such as those designed NVIDIA Or Qualcomm. Arm and AMD are all involved in auto chips.
In a $1.2 billion funding round from February, Wave announced Nvidia as a backer. Now with all the major semiconductor names on board, Wave has scope to work more closely with companies as it looks to commercialize its technology and sell it to more automakers.
“The exciting thing for us is that it gives our customers the choice of what silicon platform they want to work with. And it gives us the flexibility to work with something that’s already being used across the industry,” Wave CEO Alex Kendall told CNBC in an interview.
“We can meet the industry where they are. This increases the speed and scale of our adoption.”
Wave is currently testing its driverless cars in the UK, Germany, Japan and the US, and has signed a commercial deal with Nissan to integrate its AI into the company’s driver-assistance systems for commercial cars. In March both the companies and uber He said they will also develop robotaxis.
Kendall declined to comment on other deals with automakers that are in the works, but said, “It’s just a matter of time before every vehicle has this kind of capability,” referring to the driverless systems being developed by Wave.
Wave faces increasing competition in the markets where it operates. Waymo is testing cars outside the US in Japan and the UK
On Tuesday, Waymo announced that its cars in London are running with trained experts. It’s another step before it starts offering passenger rides, which the Alphabet-owned company is aiming to do this year.
Meanwhile, Chinese players like Baidu, we rode And pony.aiare expanding their driverless technology offerings overseas.
