Uber and British artificial intelligence startup Wayve announced a partnership Thursday that will see the two firms collaborate on autonomous driving technology.

As part of the deal، Uber is also investing an undisclosed amount into Wayve for a minority stake، the companies said in a statement. The investment is an extension of Wayve’s $1 billion Series C funding round announced earlier this year، which was led by Japanese tech investor SoftBank.

Investing in Wayve

U.S. chipmaker Nvidia and software giant Microsoft also invested in Wayve’s Series C.

“Wayve is building a ‘general purpose’ driving Al that can power all levels of driving automation in any type of vehicle، anywhere in the world،” Alex Kendall، Wayve’s co-founder and CEO، said in the statement.

He said that، together with Uber، Wayve is “excited to work with Automotive OEMs [original equipment makers] to bring autonomous driving technologies to consumers sooner.”

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi added that the two companies “share a vision of reimagining mobility for the better.”

“Wayve’s advanced Embodied AI approach holds a ton of promise as we work towards a world where modern vehicles are shared، electric and autonomous،” Khosrowshahi said.

Uber will integrate Wayve’s AV2.0 technology — an algorithm-based product that enables vehicles to drive themselves using data from the physical environment — into consumer vehicles “to enable a range of automated driving capabilities،” according to the statement.

Wayve’s AV2.0 product is an end-to-end AI solution that allows automakers to equip existing vehicles with Level 2+ advanced driver assistance and Level 3 and 4 automated driving capabilities.

Different levels of vehicle autonomy are determined by SAE International، a global standards body for the mobility engineering industry.

In the future، Uber intends to launch self-driving vehicles on its app equipped with Wayve’s tech، the companies said.

Uber's driving car unit

Previously، Uber had its own self-driving car unit، but it sold the division in 2020 to Aurora Technologies، an Amazon-backed self-driving car firm. As part of that deal، Uber said it would invest $400 million into Aurora.

The ride-sharing giant announced last week a similar tie-up with Cruise، a General Motors-backed autonomous driving startup، to offer driverless rides on its ride-hailing network.

Uber has also offered rides in vehicles operated by Waymo، the Google self-driving spinoff، as part of a commercial tie-up. In 2019، Waymo announced a similar partnership with Lyft، a competitor to Uber.