Wayve, a London maker of artificial intelligence systems for autonomous vehicles, said on Tuesday that it had raised $1 billion, an eye-popping sum for a European start-up and an illustration of investor optimism about A.I.’s ability to reshape industries. Previous investors in Wayve include Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief A.I. Wayve was co-founded in 2017 by Alex Kendall, a Cambridge University doctorate student focused on computer vision and robotics. Unlike generative A.I. systems made by Wayve serve as the brains for physical objects, be they cars, robots or manufacturing systems.
