\n<\/p>\n
Wayve, a UK-based self-driving tech startup, is allowing its employees to sell a portion of their vested equity. \u00a0The $85 million tender offer \u2014 essentially a structured opportunity for employees to sell shares back to investors \u2014 is being led by the company\u2019s existing and new investors at the company\u2019s latest valuation of $8.5 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n That valuation was set in February when the nine-year-old company raised a $1.2 billion Series D led by Eclipse, Balderton and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and included participation from Ontario Teachers\u2019 Pension Plan, Baillie Gifford, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Uber.<\/p>\n This is Wayve\u2019s second employee liquidity event. The company previously held a tender offer alongside its $1.05 billion<\/a> Series C funding round in May 2024.<\/p>\n Wayve\u2019s offering is part of a growing trend<\/a> of AI startups. Rather than waiting years for an exit, companies are using tender offers as a retention tool, giving employees a reason to stick around rather than jump to a competitor \u2014 or start their own shop \u2014 the moment their options vest.<\/p>\n Other startups that have recently completed employee tender offers include Decagon<\/a>,\u00a0which builds AI agents that handle customer service for enterprises like Duolingo and Hertz; ElevenLabs<\/a>, the AI voice-generation company behind much of the internet\u2019s synthetic speech and dubbing tools;\u00a0Linear<\/a>, a popular project-management platform built for software teams; and\u00a0Clay<\/a>, a sales and marketing automation tool that helps companies research and reach prospects. (Clay has run two tenders in the last nine months alone.)<\/p>\n These startups are able to provide employee liquidity primarily because investors are eager to buy more of the equity in these high-growth companies, even at a premium, betting the businesses will be worth even more down the line.<\/p>\n Wayve uses a self-learning approach to its autonomous driving. Instead of relying on the pre-built, high-definition maps most self-driving programs use, its software is an end-to-end neural network that learns to drive purely from data \u2014 closer to how a human picks up driving through experience, its founders argue.<\/p>\n In pursuit of a \u201cgeneral-purpose\u201d AI driver \u2014 one that could, in theory, work across countries, cars, and road conditions \u2014 the company has more than doubled its headcount to 1,200 employees over the past year.<\/p>\n Wayve is targeting robotaxi pilot launches in partnership with Uber later this year, while separately planning to integrate its AI software into Nissan\u2019s next-generation driver-assist systems starting in 2027.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n