ISSUE 88 MARCH 2026
THE VOICE OF THE NEW ZEALAND AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY
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From Canterbury farm kid to the frontier of autonomous driving CHRISTCHURCH-RAISED ALEX KENDALL'S LONDON-BASED COMPANY WAYVE HAS JUST RAISED US$1.5 BILLION TO PUT ITS AI DRIVING SOFTWARE INTO UBER ROBOTAXIS AND CONSUMER VEHICLES — AND THERE'S A STRONG KIWI THREAD RUNNING THROUGH THE WHOLE STORY
W
hen Alex Kendall was studying mechatronics engineering at the University of Auckland, he spent his evenings in the university lab 3D-printing robots and building drones, occasionally sleeping under the desks. A decade on, the Christchurch-raised engineer is running an US$8.6 billion company backed by Microsoft, Nvidia, Uber, and three of the world's largest car manufacturers — and his technology is
about to go into production vehicles. In late February, Kendall announced that his London-based company Wayve had closed a US$1.2 billion Series D funding round, with additional milestone-based capital from Uber, bringing the total secured to US$1.5 billion. The raise positions Wayve to shift from research and development into full commercial deployment of its AI-powered autonomous driving platform
Alex Kendall, Wayve CEO and Co-Founder
KIWI ROOTS Kendall grew up on a family farm in Canterbury, attended Christ's College in Christchurch, and then went on to study at Auckland University, where he skipped the first year and graduated with an honours degree in mechatronics engineering, first in his class. He then won a Woolf Fisher Scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he completed a doctorate in deep learning, computer vision, and robotics in 2017 — the same year he co-founded Wayve. On his personal website, Kendall traces his sense of curiosity back to his childhood in New Zealand's South Island, where he taught himself to solder circuits, code computer games, and build drones.
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