- Uber is all-in on robotaxis, and now it's bringing them to London.
- The ride-hailing giant is partnering with Wayve, a Microsoft-backed AI startup, to pilot a driverless ride-hailing service.
- Wayve's CEO told BI that London's chaotic roads made it the perfect place to test a robotaxi service.
London's famous black cabs could be about to get some robotaxi competition.
Uber and Wayve, a British AI startup backed by Microsoft and Nvidia, announced on Tuesday that they will trial fully driverless autonomous vehicles in London, as the ride-hailing giant steps up its robotaxi ambitions.
The driverless ride-hailing service in the UK capital will see Uber deploy vehicles running Wayve's AI-powered self-driving tech in a pilot program.
"If you prove this technology works here, you can literally drive anywhere. It's one of the hardest proving grounds," Wayve CEO Alex Kendall told Business Insider during a test drive ahead of the launch.
The news comes after the UK government announced it would fast-track approval for pilots of self-driving taxis from 2027 to spring 2026.
Wayve and Uber declined to say when the initial deployment will begin, or which global carmaker would provide the vehicles for the robotaxi service.
After largely abandoning plans to build its own self-driving cars, Uber has shifted strategy and struck a spree of deals to add robotaxis operated by self-driving companies to its app.
The company has a partnership with Google-backed Waymo to operate its autonomous taxis on the Uber platform in Austin and Phoenix, and has signed similar deals with Chinese robotaxi startups WeRide and Pony.AI.
Uber inked its deal with Wayve last year, agreeing to deploy self-driving vehicles powered by the British startup's technology on its platform in multiple markets around the world.
Uber also invested in Wayve through an extension of the company's Series C fundraising round, which raised $1.05 billion from investors including Softbank, Nvidia, and Microsoft.
The London-based startup, which has been testing its fleet of autonomous Ford Mach-Es with a safety driver in London for several years, has quickly become one of the buzziest names in the robotaxi industry.
Wayve says its "AI driver" runs on an end-to-end AI model — an approach also adopted by Tesla — allowing it to react to the physical world in the same way a human would and drive anywhere, unlike rivals like Waymo, which rely on high-definition maps to operate their robotaxis.
Speaking to Business Insider from the back of a Wayve self-driving car in central London, Wayve CEO Kendall said the company had tested its autonomous vehicles in 90 cities over the past 90 days.
"It's a real demonstration of how well this technology generalizes. The diversity we saw on these roads is immense, from winding roads in the Swiss Alps and dirt tracks in Italy to diverse cities like Vancouver and Tokyo," said Kendall.
He said the vehicles in the robotaxi service in London will initially use a mixed suite of sensors, including cameras, radar, and lidar (laser-based sensors), adding that the chaotic nature of London's roads made it the perfect place to trial Wayve's technology without a safety driver. During BI's test ride, Wayve's AI driver navigated a number of obstacles, such as roadworks in London's busy Kings Cross district.
"The ambition is to be driving in every city Uber operates in with our robotaxis. And I think only through end-to-end machine learning can you reach that level of scale," he added.
