Wayve and Mercedes-Benz Sign AI Driver Production Agreement

Wayve and Mercedes-Benz have signed a definitive production agreement to integrate the Wayve AI Driver into future Mercedes-Benz vehicles, the companies announced on September 22, 2026, with the system set to deliver advanced urban point-to-point driving assistance to customers starting in the next two years.

The announcement, issued from London, frames the arrangement as a global strategic partnership reflecting what both companies describe as a shared ambition to bring intelligent and scalable driving assistance technology to markets worldwide. Alongside urban driving, the stated scope of the integration includes advanced highway point-to-point driving assistance.

Prior Collaboration and Technical Integration

The agreement follows Mercedes-Benz’s strategic investment in Wayve’s Series D funding round in February 2026 and builds on a multi-year technical partnership between the two organizations.

As part of that work, the companies integrated the Wayve AI Driver into the Mercedes-Benz production system architecture using Mercedes-Benz hardware, the MB.OS operating system, and map interfaces. Wayve said the integration demonstrated the generalization capabilities of the AI Driver, proved its potential for application in future Mercedes-Benz vehicles, and set the foundation for mass production development.

The joint teams also completed demonstration drives in Stuttgart, London, and San Francisco, covering routes that ranged from city streets to freeways and country roads.

Statements From Mercedes-Benz and Wayve Leadership

Jörg Burzer, Chief Technology Officer of Mercedes-Benz, described the partnership as the world’s first integration of the Wayve AI Driver in the premium segment, expanding the availability of advanced urban and highway point-to-point driving assistance. He said the two companies are laying the foundation to roll the technology out worldwide and to deliver what he called an outstanding driving experience to a broader range of customers.

Alex Kendall, Co-founder and CEO of Wayve, said his company was excited to partner with Mercedes-Benz, which he described as an iconic company with a strong reputation for automotive innovation and engineering excellence. “The pace and depth of our development work together reflect a deep technical alignment between our teams, integrating Wayve’s embodied intelligence with Mercedes-Benz’s vehicle engineering and safety expertise,” Kendall said, adding that he was proud to build the future of autonomous driving together with Mercedes-Benz.

AV2.0 Platform, Licensing, and Commercialization

Under what Wayve calls its AV2.0 approach, the Wayve AI Driver learns to drive like a human would, reasoning and adapting to its surroundings without HD maps. Wayve says the architecture, trained on NVIDIA AI infrastructure hosted on Microsoft Azure, generalizes to new cities and driving environments without geofences or city-specific retraining. According to the company, the same underlying AI Driver is designed to scale across the autonomy spectrum, from advanced driver assistance to fully driverless products, offering automakers a single system for line-ups that span consumer cars to robotaxis.

Wayve licenses the AI Driver directly to automakers and provides tools to customize driving models for specific vehicles and brands. The system runs entirely on onboard vehicle compute and embedded sensors, without high-definition maps or location-specific engineering. By partnering with automakers and mobility platforms rather than vertically integrating, Wayve says autonomy can scale globally with lower capital intensity.

Wayve announced the $1.2 billion Series D on February 25, 2026, at a post-money valuation of $8.6 billion. Eclipse, Balderton and SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led the round, with participation from Microsoft, NVIDIA and Uber and investments from global automakers Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Stellantis. Wayve said the round secured $1.5 billion in total capital, a figure that includes additional milestone-based capital committed by Uber to scale Wayve-powered robotaxi deployments globally.

In the February announcement, Wayve said it had become the first and only autonomous vehicle developer to drive zero-shot (without city-specific fine-tuning before deployment) in more than 500 cities across Europe, North America and Japan in the preceding year. The company attributes that performance to a foundation model trained on driving data spanning more than 70 countries and a wide range of vehicle platforms.

Wayve’s stated commercialization timeline calls for commercial robotaxi trials with Uber beginning in 2026, with a first service planned for London and expansion to more than 10 markets globally. Under that arrangement, Wayve deploys the AI Driver in L4-capable vehicles from participating automakers while Uber owns and operates the fleet. From 2027, the company says, consumers will be able to buy passenger vehicles equipped with the AI Driver, starting with L2+ “hands-off” capability that allows the vehicle to steer, navigate and respond to traffic under driver supervision.