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The UK self driving startup Wave has raised over a billion dollars in its latest funding round, attracting interest from the US chip maker in video, joining US Now to discuss is the Wave CEO Alex Kendall, This is really an impressive funding round. I wonder where it leaves your company's valuation.
Starting with the question, the one question we can answer today, Sorry, but thank you.
It's a huge honor.
We'll put it this way. Are you a unicorn or are you so far past being a unicorn that milestts milestones a dot in the rear view mirror.
Yeah, well, if you raise a billion dollars, I don't think you need an artificial intelligence to tell you that that makes you a unicorn. But look, the funding is a it's a lagging signal for us. I think it's a hugely exciting validation of the vision that we've been working on for so many years on it's been quite a contrariant approach to autonomous driving, but today we are just so excited about the potential of AI to disrupt the automotive sector.
So how are you planning to spend the money?
Then, Big question.
So we've been developing embodied AI. I mean, if you think about AI that we've seen today with search engines and chatbots, that's just the tip of the iceberg. The really big opportunity here is bringing it into the physical world, and autonomous driving is just the best example of this.
So we're going to be using the funds to grow our team and turn this technology into a product and hopefully bring it to cars around the world very soon, starting as a driver assistance system to improve the safety and enjoyment of the drives you can have around the world, and very quickly train it and grow it up into a full autonomy stack.
It's interesting how you've chosen not to partner with a single car manufacturer to install this tack into vehicles. You're keeping your options open. Which car bakers are you talking to? Which ones do you think about working with?
Yeah, I think so.
We're talking with all of the leading brands and we're excited to be working with it with some of them. But the key thing is that I don't think one car manufacturer can build the safest, the most performance system on their own. We want to ensure that we can build an embodied AI platform that can learn from the experience of a number of different manufacturers across the world, and the real key for that is you get the diverse experience you need to solve the long tail of
edge cases. It's really a partnership approach and we want to ensure that the entire automotive ecosystem can access the benefits of autonomy.
When should we expect to see driverless cars in the UK now? This is a subject that we've discussed with you before.
We've been testing on UK roads with safety operators behind the wheel since twenty eighteen. One of the other exciting things happening right now is we're seeing law about to go through Parliament to legalize the operation of these vehicles here in the UK. To legalize it provide a comprehensive framework that allows them to be operated without a safety driver. So all the pieces are coming together and to we've got the capital to go build this into a product.
The regulation and in the automotive industry, we've seen so many big inflection points in the last year with software defined vehicles making it possible to deploy this kind of technology on cars, and of course the explosive breakthroughs we've seen in AI in the last couple of years.
It's coming really soon.
Well we are speaking of which with Invidia being an investor, does it mean that you're going to get preferential access to those extremely in demand AI chips.
Well, the scale of ambition we have to train in AI is just enormous, and I think the training on video data requires pretty significant infrastructure that we're thrilled to be working with Microsoft Azure and an Nvidia on. But of course, ultimately we want to ensure this technology can benefit automotive manufacturers no matter where their data is or what will provide them the flexibility to work with the
chips that they want to. But from our perspective, Nvidia has the best embedded environment in the market today and so we're excited to be developing on that platform.
Tassa's making some big promises in terms of getting self driving robotaxis up and running very quickly as well pushing towards self full self driving. How do you view them as a competitor in this space?
Yeah, it was.
I mean it was exciting to us to see Tiesler pivot last year into an end to end AI approach like what we've been pursuing for the last seven years. I think that this is an enormous market though, and for the other ninety nine percent of cars and are manufacturer around the real world, we really want to become the embodied aiye platform for them and bring the benefits to autonomy to all kinds of vehicles around the world.
Do you think it's realistic that the autonomous robotaxi plan will be in place by August the eighth, as elon mos most promises.
Oh, look, I can't comment on what Tisa's building, but I wish them all the best. I' we're heads down at the moment making sure that we can execute on our roadmap.
You've said that this is the final major fundraise for your company. Do you have an IPO in sights any thought of one that might happen?
Oh?
Equally, I mean, we've got all the capital we need to go and build this out to product. So our team is just thrilled at the opportunity and is going to remain focused on getting this built out. When we earn the right to talk about an IPO, I'd love to talk about it right now. It's all about how can we bring the benefits of autonomy and improve road safety around the world.
That's what we're focused on today.
Okay, well with this major fund raising around and wonder how long you see that funding in your current investment plan covering.
Yeah, so that's a good question.
We certainly need to grow and are looking to bring on board more talented AI expertise and product expertise to go go and to develop our roadmap and get this
get the system shipped. But we want to be disciplined around this, and we're not going to take a blitz scaling approach or anything like that, but make sure that the lean, innovative I guess somewhat scrappy culture that we've started with continues strongly and ensures that we don't route force the problem with capital and put infrastructure like high definition maps or other things in place that the industry's
seen so far. But we want to make sure that we can build a more intelligent system that solves the problem efficiently. And some of the things that have been caught to us, like camera first approaches rather than lighter or unsupervised machine learning to be able to more efficiently learn without labeled data. These kind of principles are going to continue to be really important for our growth and making sure we execute efficiently.
And can you get enough of that expertise right here in the UK? Richie Snax as he wants the UK to be an AI superpower. Is this a good place to grow your business?
It has been so far.
I mean the academic ecosystem like Cambridge University where I started working on these ideas, has been a great ecosystem.
In the early venture capital we've seen.
I think there's work to be done in the UK for more of the growth stage capital. And you know, look, we've looked to the US in Japan for this round here, but by and large the government has been supportive and we're excited to see regulation come through to enable self driving here in the UK shortly. So all in all, it's a world leading ecosystem for AI, and hopefully we can help do our part to help build it even stronger.
I note this so far in that answer, and I wonder if you looking to the US in Japan for this funding round should be your warning to those who are in charge in the UK that they need to do more to keep a company like yours here.
Of course, everyone needs to stay on their toes, but no, we have no intentions to move our headquarters.
I live and we're based here in London.
We have offices in Silicon Valley and just recently open one in Vancouver, and of course are working with partners and all the automotive hotspots Tokyo, Germany, Detroit. So we are a global company and we intend to ship our product worldwide. You know, my family's screaming out for it to come back home to New Zealand one day soon as well.
But the core of our expertise have.
They been in touch? Have you had contact from the government in New Zealand looking for you to move?
Well, you know in New Zealand's a small place that you might run into the Prime Minister at a local cafe.
But no, not, we haven't had conversations recently.
And have you also been talking to the Labor Party potentially the next government about your plans?
We have.
We've made sure that we've engaged both both sides of the benches. We've had many ministers and shadow ministers for demo rights to experience our technology and make sure they understand the potential of it. So, you know, I'm really excited to work with government and whatever shape it it may be going forward. To ensure that this regulation can be implemented effectively for the country.
Do you find that they did understand the messages that you were putting across.
Yeah, it's a it's a complex set of technology that that needs time to understand, and this is an ongoing conversation, but certainly it's been great to get get it started over the last couple of years. And the best way to see it is to come come right in the car and experience.
It for yourself.
Alex Candle, there CEO of Wave