LONDON — Uber and British synthetic intelligence startup Wayve introduced a partnership Thursday that may see the 2 companies collaborate on autonomous driving expertise.

As a part of the deal, Uber can be investing an undisclosed quantity into Wayve for a minority stake, the businesses mentioned in a press release. The funding is an extension of Wayve’s $1 billion Collection C funding spherical introduced earlier this yr, which was led by Japanese tech investor SoftBank.

U.S. chipmaker Nvidia and software program big Microsoft additionally invested in Wayve’s Collection C.

“Wayve is constructing a ‘normal goal’ driving Al that may energy all ranges of driving automation in any sort of auto, wherever on the planet,” Alex Kendall, Wayve’s co-founder and CEO, mentioned within the assertion.

He mentioned that, along with Uber, Wayve is “excited to work with Automotive OEMs [original equipment makers] to carry autonomous driving applied sciences to customers sooner.”

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi added that the 2 firms “share a imaginative and prescient of reimagining mobility for the higher.”

“Wayve’s superior Embodied AI method holds a ton of promise as we work in direction of a world the place trendy autos are shared, electrical and autonomous,” Khosrowshahi mentioned.

Uber will combine Wayve’s AV2.0 expertise — an algorithm-based product that allows autos to drive themselves utilizing knowledge from the bodily surroundings — into shopper autos “to allow a variety of automated driving capabilities,” in accordance with the assertion.

Wayve’s AV2.0 product is an end-to-end AI answer that permits automakers to equip current autos with Stage 2+ superior driver help and Stage 3 and 4 automated driving capabilities.

Totally different ranges of auto autonomy are decided by SAE Worldwide, a world requirements physique for the mobility engineering trade.

Sooner or later, Uber intends to launch self-driving autos on its app geared up with Wayve’s tech, the businesses mentioned.

Beforehand, Uber had its personal self-driving automobile unit, nevertheless it bought the division in 2020 to Aurora Applied sciences, an Amazon-backed self-driving automobile agency. As a part of that deal, Uber mentioned it could make investments $400 million into Aurora.

The ride-sharing big introduced final week an analogous tie-up with Cruise, a Common Motors-backed autonomous driving startup, to supply driverless rides on its ride-hailing community.

Uber has additionally supplied rides in autos operated by Waymo, the Google self-driving spinoff, as a part of a business tie-up. In 2019, Waymo introduced an analogous partnership with Lyft, a competitor to Uber.