Wayve's Alex Kendall on Outlook For Self-Driving Car Software

In terms of the deployment of this capital Alex, around this really fascinating company, does it go on the compute, you build out your own models, We know how intensive that is in terms of cost, the build out compute, the needs for those ships, the infrastructure, how much of the funding goes towards the infrastructure, how much towards the build out of the business, the hiring of talent either surround is super exciting for us as a team because it gives us the capital to go and invest further in these spaces. It's really all about taking the technology we've we've been building for seven years now and being able to turn it into a product for the automotive industry. So we're going to be investing further and increasing the data and compute to be able to train say. I mean this L of ambition we have here I think goes beyond what we've seen from large language models today. Being able to train an AI that we can trust to physically interact with us in the world and of course turning it into a product, building the robust safety architectures to make this a winning and trusted solution in the automotive market. And trust is really important and there's a differentiation between what you guys doing some of the other competitors out there because your model is based, your system is based on this AI model. So it takes in the inputs from its outside environment, feeds it back into the model, the inputs as well from the driver, those who are behind the wheel, very different from some of the other prospects out there. How wide is the most now that you have versus your competitors? Well it's it's been a different approach for the last seven years, one that's been contrarian to the rest of the industry. Yeah, the AV one point O the first generation of these technologies built cars or built built systems that would largely follow or work within constrained areas following a a high definition map that told them how to operate. What we've built is an embodied AI system. And I I really want to extend the conversation in AI from chat bots and and and and copilots and search engines to things like alpha fold that we just heard about or or embodied AI bringing AI into the physical world, that's really the big opportunity that we have here. We've been pioneering this technology you know here out of London and now that's him around the world to come up with some of the ideas that can allow it to be robust and and trusted in the physical world and obviously now now start operating in in in the automotive industry. I mean you do you you were contrarian and famously Musk as well and he changed his view. You had a conversation with him at one point and and he challenged you on your view on this. People are coming around to to this system that you're putting in place including it seems Elon, Elon Musk as well. So in terms of that mode that you have are you feeling that competitive pressure now Alex, Well ultimately we want to be deploying the pressure is a privilege we're we're we're excited to to to be to be building it out here. But ultimately we want to build an AI that can be a platform across the whole automotive industry. And I guess what I'd say is I think the safest and most performance system is going to be trained with the data and experience from the the largest diversity of experience from all of the automotive brands. And we really want to see experience across the industry and provide that solution to be testing, to be testing the system here in the UK since 2018. Give us the time frame when do we expect to see these cars deployed on the roads, it's coming. We're not going to give a specific time frame because we don't want to add to the hype of the industry. I really want to make sure we can be his down and focus and build this. But I mean just just yesterday I was on a demo drive through central London. We can our system can drive with hands off where you have no, you know, no interaction with the controls of the car, drive through all of the complexities of central London around Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, all of these kind of sites. And of course you know the complexity we have on the road here with cyclists buses cutting in and out taxis that's the kind of environment that operates in image problem isn't there around autonomous driving and you're you're you're the the the kind of centre of trying to change that. Isn't that fair to say there have been a number of accidents from some of your competitors using different systems. How much of a challenge is that you're having to change the branding around autonomous driving The the promises have been significant we haven't matched them but you're part of trying to reset that. I think the benefits are enormous and and I think the world is aligned around those of course improving Rd. safety, freeing up time, improving the sustainability of of of transportation. So we're all in line on that. How do you convince people that these are safe systems? It's it's by setting the right expectations and I think the model we're taking about getting the system deployed as driver assistance first. So being able to improve the active safety of your driving, being able to reduce the stress and and you know, while you still monitor the system is the right way to get started to earn trust. And then of course the experience of deploying in millions of vehicles will allow us to grow the system quickly from driver assistance to full autonomy. I think that's a better model than starting immediately with robo taxis in an unproven way. So we want to grow the technology, earn trust and work with regulators. How much funding does, how much runway does this funding, does this funding give you an IPO has to be in the back of you. I know you're going to, you're going to say we're heads down and working on, on the product right now. We're not focused on the IPO, but it's there, Alex, I know it's there. Give us some sense as to as to the listing plans for this business and whether it could ever happen in the UK Well this, this, this funding gives us, it funds our entire business plan which is iron. It's a real, real to life as an entrepreneur to to have that and and it lets us go and build out this technology. We're talking 12 months, we've got we we need to get the product shipped first and so that's what we're focused on right now. So, so you're right, we are we are heads down when we earn the right to have a conversation around an IPO we'll we'll have that when that conversation comes. It's not going to be the UK is it? Frankly I'm not going to wait into their conversation right now. We're we're pretty focused on what we're doing in terms of the data, who owns it, is it the driver, is it your customers, is it you? We we have commercial arrangements to lose a use a wide variety of data. One of the interesting things is we can train our system of course on the driving experience from the autonomous vehicles we work with or the the the automotive manufacturers we partner with. Also Internet scale data, dashcam data. This is the amazing thing about AI right now is that it's becoming multi modal and and able to bring together sources of data across the board to ensure we can build the most intelligent system with the general purpose reasoning to deal with the long tail of edge cases you see on the road potential top line market value of this particular sector. Alex, I mean you can read some management consulting quotes that it's in the trillions. And I I really believe that I think you you think this is a potentially trillion dollar market embodied AI is it's the next wave of tooling. You know we've had calculators, computers actually having machines that are intelligent that you can trust. I think you can delegate tasks to and can help support your life. I mean this is this is just bringing enormous potential. Autonomous driving will be the first example of this because there exists the data, the the vehicles, the business model to get going. But we're gonna see a whole wealth of different, different intelligent machines that will really support our lives. And embodied AI is what makes us possible, OK?