The Self-Driving Startup Nobody Saw Coming | E2289
This Week In Startups is made possible by:
IM8 Health: IM8health.com/TWIST
Squarespace: Squarespace.com/TWIST
Render - Render.com/TWIST
Self-driving just stopped being a science problem and became an engineering challenge instead. That's the through-line of today’s double-header with the CEOs of two of the most important AV companies in the world — Wayve's Alex Kendall and Waabi's Raquel Urtasun. Between them: ~$2B raised in the last six months, Uber as a partner, Nissan and Volvo as OEMs, and a shared bet that end-to-end AI plus world models beats Waymo's city-by-city map-and-pray approach.
If you want to understand the state of the self-driving industry beyond recent Waymo announcements, this is the episode for you.
Guest Links:
Wayve: wayve.ai/
Waabi: http://waabi.ai/
Alex Kendall https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexgkendall/
Raquel Uratsun: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raquel-urtasun-298400139/
Company Links:
Wayve’s GAIA-2 world model: https://wayve.ai/thinking/gaia-2/
Wayve’s 500 city roadshow: https://wayve.ai/thinking/ai-500-roadshow-500-cities/
Wavye’s most recent funding round: https://wayve.ai/press/series-d/
Waybe + Uber: https://wayve.ai/press/wayve-nissan-uber-robotaxi-collaboration/
Waabi closed-loop simulator: https://waabi.ai/insights/waabi-world
Waabi + Volvo: https://waabi.ai/insights/waabi-and-volvo-autonomous-solutions-partner-to-jointly-develop-and-deploy-autonomous-transportation-solutions
Waabi + Uber: https://www.uberfreight.com/en-US/blog/uber-freight-and-waabi-introduce-industry-first-autonomous-truck-deployment-solution
Timestamps:
0:00 Alex Kendall (Wayve) joins the show
1:19 The contrarian bet on end-to-end AI and world models in 2017
3:05 What is a world model? GAIA-2 and GAIA-3 explained
7:34 Sensor agnosticism: camera, radar, LiDAR and minimum bar for safety
9:56 $1.5B raised — have we cracked self-driving?
10:09 Render: Find out why 5 million developers are already using the all-in-one cloud platform, Render. Go to https://render.com/twist and apply for the Render Startup Program to get $500-$100,000 in free credits, depending on your stage and backers.
20:38 Squarespace: Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST
25:03 How consumers will actually pay: bundle, subscription, or free trial
30:15 IM8 Health: Start feeling like your best self every day. Go to https://IM8health.com/twist and use the code TWiST to get a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, and 10% off your order.
35:59 Raquel Urtasun (Waabi) joins the show
36:25 World models as controllable simulators for physical AI
43:34 One AI brain across trucks, robotaxis, and beyond
47:35 What changed in AI to make 2026 the deployment year
52:28 Why Waabi raised $1B when they're capital-efficient
58:52 Where Waabi is today: Volvo VNL Autonomous, Dallas-Houston, Uber Freight
1:00:50 Per-mile pricing and the Driver-as-a-Service model
1:07:20 Has Uber tried to buy Waabi? "Not for sale"
Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com
Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com
Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp
Follow Lon:
X: https://x.com/lons
Follow Alex:
X: https://x.com/alex
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm
Follow Jason:
X: https://twitter.com/Jason
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis
Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/
Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis
Follow TWiST:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups
Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com
Uber, Nissan, and Mercedes Chose This Self-Driving Startup | Alex Kendall, Wayve
"Every vehicle is capable of driverless operation. That's clearly the steady state of where we're going."
Wayve started in a rented house in Cambridge with $1.5M, a car in the garage, and an aim to integrate end-to-end AI into driving. A decade later it's driven across 506 cities without a single HD map and is worth over $8.6 billion.
In this episode, CEO Alex Kendall joins Lukas Biewald to talk about how he built the AI driver Uber, Nvidia, Mercedes, and Nissan all backed, and why putting self-driving AI into 100 million cars a year is a far bigger bet than 10,000 robotaxis.
Waymo and Tesla both come up. He doesn't shy away.
Connect with us here:
Alex Kendall
Lukas Biewald
Wayve
Weights and Biases
How End-to-End Learning Created Autonomous Driving 2.0: Wayve CEO Alex Kendall
Alex Kendall founded Wayve in 2017 with a contrarian vision: replace the hand-engineered autonomous vehicle stack with end-to-end deep learning. While AV 1.0 companies relied on HD maps, LiDAR retrofits, and city-by-city deployments, Wayve built a generalization-first approach that can adapt to new vehicles and cities in weeks. Alex explains how world models enable reasoning in complex scenarios, why partnering with automotive OEMs creates a path to scale beyond robo-taxis, and how language integration opens up new product possibilities. From driving in 500 cities to deploying with manufacturers like Nissan, Wayve demonstrates how the same AI breakthroughs powering LLMs are transforming the physical economy.
Hosted by: Pat Grady and Sonya Huang
The Self-Driving Unicorn You Need to Meet & MicroStrategy's Bitcoin Bet | E2052
Todays show:
Jason and Alex welcomed Alex Kendall to the show. He's the founder and CEO of Wayve, an AI company working on self-driving. You might recall that Wayve raised $1 billion earlier this year, but TWIST wanted to know how the company intends to commercialize -- and how soon. From there, it was back to the bitcoin mines. Figuratively, as the hosts dug into MicroStrategies' bitcoin buying bet. Precisely why it is trading at such a NAV premium remains occluded to the show, but we did chase down its debt terms. Next week: More TWiST500!
*
Timestamps:
(0:00) Jason and Alex kick off the show
(2:32) Introduction of guest Alex Kendall Co-Founder & CEO of Wayve
(3:00) Alex Kendall on Wayve's autonomous driving approach and AI technology
(8:29) LiDAR vs. camera-first solutions debate
(10:19) Cloud Devs - Visit https://www.clouddevs.com/twist for an unbeatable offer on hiring elite Latam talent today.
(12:23) Economic viability and strategy of autonomous vehicles
(17:49) Timeline for Wave's technology deployment and future market scenarios
(19:58) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist
(22:34) Autonomy subscription models and AI driving behavior challenges
(30:01) Kyte - Download the Kyte app today and use code JASON to save 10% on your first rental.
(33:00) AI driving culture and Twist 500 update
(37:05) MicroStrategy's Bitcoin strategy and market concerns
(41:33) Bitcoin convertible debt analysis
(49:03) Deciphering complex business models and historical examples
(51:24) Evaluating new financial terms and investor advice
(52:29) Final thoughts and invitation to Michael Saylor
*
Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com
Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com
Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp
*
Mentioned on the show:
Check out Wayve: https://wayve.ai/
Check out MicroStrategy: https://www.microstrategy.com/
TWiST Episode #1251 with Do Kwon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLZL8iPKsHQ
*
Follow Alex Kendall:
X: https://x.com/alexgkendall
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexgkendall/
*
Follow Alex:
X: https://x.com/alex
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm
Follow Jason:
X: https://twitter.com/Jason
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis
*
Thank you to our partners:
(10:19) Cloud Devs - Visit https://www.clouddevs.com/twist for an unbeatable offer on hiring elite Latam talent today.
(19:58) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist
(30:01) Kyte - Download the Kyte app today and use code JASON to save 10% on your first rental.
*
Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis
*
Follow TWiST:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups
Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com
*
Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916
Wayve CEO Alex Kendall on Making a Splash in Autonomous Vehicles - Ep. 209
A new era of autonomous vehicle technology, known as AV 2.0, has emerged, marked by large, unified AI models that can control multiple parts of the vehicle stack, from perception and planning to control.
Wayve, a London-based autonomous driving technology company, and a member of NVIDIA's startup accelerator program, is leading the surf.
In the latest episode of NVIDIA’s AI Podcast, host Katie Burke Washabaugh spoke with the company’s cofounder and CEO, Alex Kendall, about what AV 2.0 means for the future of self-driving cars.
Unlike AV 1.0’s focus on perfecting a vehicle’s perception capabilities using multiple deep neural networks, AV 2.0 calls for comprehensive in-vehicle intelligence to drive decision-making in real-world, dynamic environments.
Embodied AI — the concept of giving AI a physical interface to interact with the world — is the basis of this new AV wave.
Kendall pointed out that it’s a “hardware/software problem — you need to consider these things separately,” even as they work together. For example, a vehicle can have the highest-quality sensors, but without the right software, the system can’t use them to execute the right decisions.
Generative AI plays a key role, enabling synthetic data generation so AV makers can use a model’s previous experiences to create and simulate novel driving scenarios.
It can “take crowds of pedestrians and snow and bring them together” to “create a snowy, crowded pedestrian scene” that the vehicle has never experienced before.
According to Kendall, that will “play a huge role in both learning and validating the level of performance that we need to deploy these vehicles safely” — all while saving time and costs.
In June, Wayve unveiled GAIA-1, a generative world model for developing autonomous vehicles.
The company also recently announced LINGO-1, an AI model that allows passengers to use natural language to enhance the learning and explainability of AI driving models.
Looking ahead, the company hopes to scale and further develop its solutions, improving the safety of AVs to deliver value, build public trust and meet customer expectations.
Kendall views embodied AI as playing a definitive role in the future of the AI landscape, pushing pioneers to “build better” and “build further” to achieve the “next big breakthroughs.”
For more on NVIDIA's Inception startup accelerator program, visit https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/startups/
#152 Alex Kendall: How Close Is AI to Taking the Wheel?
This episode is sponsored by Netsuite by Oracle, the number one cloud financial system, streamlining accounting, financial management, inventory, HR, and more.
Download NetSuite's popular KPI Checklist, designed to give you consistently excellent performance - absolutely free at NetSuite.com/EYEONAI
On episode #152 of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Alex Kendall, founder and CEO of Wavye, a company building autonomous vehicle technology using AI.
In this episode, Alex provides an inside look at Wavye's approach to autonomous driving, which leverages world models and reinforcement learning to create an AI "driver" that can understand complex urban environments. Alex explains how world models allow an AI system to imagine multiple futures before acting, enabling safer decision-making, and shares Wavye's progress on deploying autonomous delivery vehicles with partners in the UK.
We also dive into the differences between world models and large language models, the unique data challenges of perception-based AI, and Wave's ambitions to expand this AI technology to new applications like humanoid robotics.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider leaving a 5-star rating on Spotify and a review on Apple Podcasts.
Craig Smith Twitter: https://twitter.com/craigss
Eye on A.I. Twitter: https://twitter.com/EyeOn_AI
(00:00) Preview, Introduction and Netsuite
(03:45) The Advantages of World Models
(10:12) Developing Autonomous Driving Technology
(16:35) Partnership with Microsoft and Training Challenges
(21:10) Decoding the Concept of Generalization in Autonomous Driving
(27:08) Compute Requirements and Infrastructure
(32:45) The Role of Azure in Training
(37:12) What Is Tokenization of Data
(41:47) Addressing Compute Constraints
(46:12) Future Applications of World Models and Open Source
How Wayve is teaching cars to drive
For Episode 8, Pieter Abbeel interviews Alex Kendall, the co-founder and CEO of Wayve, the London-based company pioneering AI technology to enable autonomous vehicles to drive in complex, never-seen-before environments. Alex is a world expert in deep learning and computer vision. Before founding Wayve, Alex was a research fellow at Cambridge University where he earned his Ph.D. in Computer Vision and Robotics.
Wayve is building global momentum for the use of deep learning to solve self-driving. Alex and his team are building AV2.0—a next generation autonomous driving system that can quickly and safely adapt to new driving domains anywhere in the world.
The interview spans a range of topics including Wayve's technological approach, its metrics for success, and Wayve's latest milestones.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE ROBOT BRAINS PODCAST TODAY | Visit therobotbrains.ai and follow us on YouTube at TheRobotBrainsPodcast, Twitter @therobotbrains, and Instagram @therobotbrains.
| Host: Pieter Abbeel | Executive Producers: Alice Patel & Henry Tobias Jones | Production: Fresh Air Production
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Robot as Vehicle
Self-driving cars are seemingly just around the corner. These robots aren’t quite ready for the streets. For every hyped-up self-driving showcase, there’s a news story about its failure. But the good news is that we get closer every year.
Alex Davies steers us through the history of autonomous vehicles. Alex Kendall maps the current self-driving landscape. And Jason Millar takes us under the hood of these robots’ computers to better understand how they make decisions.
If you want to read up on some of our research on self-driving cars, you can check our all our bonus material over at redhat.com/commandlineheroes. Follow along with the episode transcript.
