# Uber, Nissan, and Mercedes Chose This Self-Driving Startup | Alex Kendall, Wayve Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/gradient-dissent/uber-nissan-and-mercedes-chose-this-self-driving-startup-alex-kendall-wayve Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/gradient-dissent/uber-nissan-and-mercedes-chose-this-self-driving-startup-alex-kendall-wayve.md Podcast: [Gradient Dissent: Conversations on AI](https://stenobird.com/podcast/gradient-dissent) Published: 2026-04-15T10:52:00+00:00 Episode link: https://wandb.ai/site/resources/podcast Audio file: https://episodes.captivate.fm/episode/4eb5f283-6abf-49f3-abf2-39e5ef84e293.mp3 Processing state: processed JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/gradient-dissent/episodes/uber-nissan-and-mercedes-chose-this-self-driving-startup-alex-kendall-wayve Duration seconds: 2749 ## Resource "Every vehicle is capable of driverless operation. That's clearly the steady state of where we're going." Wayve started in a rented house in Cambridge with $1.5M, a car in the garage, and an aim to integrate end-to-end AI into driving. A decade later it's driven across 506 cities without a single HD map and is worth over $8.6 billion. In this episode, CEO Alex Kendall joins Lukas Biewald to talk about how he built the AI driver Uber, Nvidia, Mercedes, and Nissan all backed, and why putting self-driving AI into 100 million cars a year is a far bigger bet than 10,000 robotaxis. Waymo and Tesla both come up. He doesn't shy away. Connect with us here: Alex Kendall Lukas Biewald Wayve Weights and Biases ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/gradient-dissent/episodes/uber-nissan-and-mercedes-chose-this-self-driving-startup-alex-kendall-wayve/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/gradient-dissent/uber-nissan-and-mercedes-chose-this-self-driving-startup-alex-kendall-wayve.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.