Driverless cars have been a familiar sight in cities like San Francisco for the past few years. Now Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve, has parked them worldwide.

The New-Zealand-born engineer launched Wayve in 2017 and was instrumental in developing its proprietary technology, named AV2.0. It was built around a vision that emphasises scalability. Rather than engineering bespoke solutions for each driving environment, Wayve aims to deploy a single, unified AI driver that can adapt to new cities, vehicles and markets with minimal recalibration. So far, it has brought its technology to more than 500 cities worldwide – and that figure now includes London In September 2026, Wayve partnered with Uber to trial the first supervised autonomous rides in the UK, with passenger-vehicle deployment of Wayve's AI Driver planned from 2027.

Today, Wayve is one of the UK’s biggest AI companies, having raised around £2bn across five rounds. It has also expanded its London base with offices in the US, Canada, Germany, Japan and Israel. In February 2026, the company closed a $1.2bn Series D in a round backed by Microsoft, British Business Bank, Uber and automotives like Mercedes-Benz.

Kendall was appointed OBE for services to AI in the 2025 New Year Honours and he remains a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Nearly a decade into Wayve’s journey, he is very much behind the wheel of its ambition to unlock safe, accessible and sustainable transport using AI.