Wayve and WealthKernel Get Funding Fuel

A startup that offers AI software for self-driving cars and a provider of digital investment services & infrastructure power ahead in London

Two different tech firms, but in one big city. Wayve and WealthKernel have picked up funding in London.

Wayve, a startup that offers artificial intelligence (AI) software for self-driving cars, announced its $200 million (£147 million) Series B round.

WealthKernel, a provider of digital investment services and infrastructure, revealed its Series A+ funding round, securing a further investment of $7 million (£5 million).

Wayve in Driving Seat 

Wayve says this latest round of funding brings its total equity raised to over $258 million (£189 million) since inception in 2017.

Eclipse Ventures, a “long-time supporter” of Wayve, led the round with participation from new financial investors. These include D1 Capital Partners, Baillie Gifford, Moore Strategic Ventures and Linse Capital, as well as additional support from Microsoft and Virgin, and early-stage investors Compound and Balderton Capital. They join investor Ocado Group and various angel investors.

Wayve’s AV2.0 (autonomous vehicles) technology is designed for fleet operators. It combines a camera-first sensing suite with the embodied intelligence of a system that continually learns from petabyte-scale driving data provided by Wayve’s partner fleets, including Ocado Group, Asda and DPD.

By using machine learning (ML), Wayve explains that it is building an AV platform that can “quickly and safely adapt its driving intelligence to new cities, different use-cases and vehicle types”.

Seth Winterroth, Partner, Eclipse Ventures, notes: “As the industry struggles to solve self-driving with traditional robotics, it is becoming increasingly clear that AV2.0 is the right pathway to build a scalable driving intelligence that can help commercial fleet operators deploy autonomy faster.”

The new capital will be used for recruitment, develop a Level 4+ AV prototype for passenger vehicles and delivery vans, and develop the data infrastructure to improve its core autonomy platform.

Wayve is using Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, to scale its ML platform. Azure is providing the compute and storage capabilities required to run autonomous driving development and testing workloads and conduct ML experimentation to improve autonomy performance.

WealthKernel’s European Dream

Fintech firm WealthKernel says it will use the additional investment to support its integration of intraday trading and the expansion of its services into European markets.

The funding round was led by XTX Ventures, the venture capital arm of XTX Markets, with participation from Digital Horizon, Big Start Ventures, and WealthKernel’s existing lead investor, ETFS Capital.

WealthKernel reckons that younger and other non-traditional investment audiences have become more engaged with managing their finances and “growing their wealth”, causing a surge in the popularity of trading and wealth management apps. According to a study by App Radar, this now sees 6.4 million people – approximately 12% of the UK adult population – using at least one investment app to manage their finances.

To tap into this trend, in the past year WealthKernel has picked up a number of deals with businesses – such as Claro Money, Wahed and Wealth8 – covering areas from halal and ethical investment to ESG.

Karan Shanmugarajah, CEO, WealthKernel, adds: “Our investors’ backing will not only help us bring our product to a wider audience and expand our platform, but also achieve our goal of becoming the leading provider of API-based wealth and investment infrastructure across Europe.”

Antony Peyton
Antony Peyton
Antony Peyton is the Editor of eWeek UK. He has 18 years' journalism and writing experience. His career has taken him to China, Japan and the UK - covering tech, fintech and business. Follow on Twitter @TonyFintech.
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