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Mercedes-Benz signs production deal to integrate Wayve AI Driver
Mercedes-Benz and Wayve have signed a definitive production agreement to integrate the Wayve AI Driver into future Mercedes-Benz vehicles, with customer availability planned within the next two years.
The companies said the initial offering will provide advanced urban point-to-point driving assistance. They have not named the vehicles, markets or a launch date beyond that timeframe.
The agreement follows Mercedes-Benz’s investment in Wayve’s Series D funding round earlier this year and builds on a multi-year technical partnership. According to the companies, their work has demonstrated the system’s potential for use in future Mercedes-Benz vehicles and established a basis for mass production development.
“This partnership marks 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,” said Jörg Burzer, chief technology officer at Mercedes-Benz. He said the companies were laying the foundation to roll out the technology worldwide.
Wayve co-founder and chief executive Alex Kendall said the pace of development reflected “a deep technical alignment between our teams”, combining Wayve’s technology with Mercedes-Benz’s vehicle engineering and safety expertise.
Wayve says its AI Driver is designed to adapt to new cities and driving conditions without high-definition maps, geofences or city-specific retraining. The company said the system is trained on NVIDIA AI infrastructure hosted on Microsoft Azure.
The same underlying system is designed for uses ranging from advanced driver assistance to fully driverless products, including robocabs The production agreement announced with Mercedes-Benz concerns driving assistance in future vehicles; the companies did not announce a Mercedes-Benz robotaxi launch.
