London-based Wayve has been backed by a host of big name investors in a funding round that brings total investment in the company up to $258 million.
Wayve believes that deep learning has an important role to play in autonomous driving. Deep learning is an area of AI that attempts to mimic the activity in layers of neurons in the brain to learn how to recognize complex patterns in data.
"We think many sensing modalities are needed," FiveAI CEO Stan Boland told CNBC, acknowledging that this creates a "fusion challenge." Wayve has chosen to license its autonomous driving technology to commercial fleets instead of trying to manufacture its own full self-driving vehicles, which are yet to go on sale to the public.
To date, Wayve has hired roughly 120 people across offices in London and Mountain View, California. It has recruited some prominent names including ex-DeepMind research scientist Chris Burgess, ex-Waymo Principal Engineer Dan McCloskey and former Tesla Software Engineer Joe Polin.