Wayve’s charm offensive: How slick lobbying helped bag Europe’s biggest AI deal

10 May 2024 , 06:36

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New legislation gives the self-driving car firm a route to market. But the proposals nearly fell victim to Britain’s political perma-crisis.

“We’ll take you safely to parliament,” Alex Kendall reassures Britain’s top transport minister as he navigates Westminster’s crowded streets in a self-driving vehicle from Kendall’s firm Wayve.

The British AI startup had a particular interest in getting the minister, Mark Harper, safely to the House of Commons that November day. He was about to launch the Automated Vehicles Bill, a piece of legislation which Wayve had lobbied hard for — and with good reason. Without the bill, its self-driving technology had no route to market.

Six months later, on May 7, the day before the bill completed its untroubled passage through Britain’s parliament, Wayve announced it had secured the biggest ever investment in a European AI firm, raising $1 billion from backers including SoftBank, NVIDIA and Microsoft.

The startup’s director of public policy, Sarah Gates, described the bill as a “major milestone” for Wayve and the rest of the industry.

But just 12 months earlier, Gates and her colleagues feared the legislation could fall victim to Britain’s political perma-crisis and be left by the wayside.

Cue a charm offensive that went all the way to the top of the British government.

The hold-up

The sector had been waiting since 2022 to see self-drive laws introduced to parliament. Boris Johnson’s government had planned to bring forward draft legislation that year.

But the collapse of the Johnson administration in June 2022, followed by the turbulence of his short-serving successor Liz Truss, meant 12 months later, they were still waiting for the legislation.

Gates said that during this time Wayve, like other businesses, struggled to get any response from government ministers. “You become more worried from a business point of view, if you can’t get any engagement,” she said.

Wayve was allowed to test its technology on the country’s roads. But it didn’t have the legal or safety framework to put its tech on the path to commercialization. The company, hailed by the government as a “true homegrown success story,” warned in July that it may be forced to develop its technology abroad if legislation wasn’t forthcoming.

But its lobbying efforts were slowly paying off.

The pitch

In 2021 Wayve hired Hanbury, a public affairs firm in London known for being close to some of the most senior figures in the U.K. government. Wayve then recruited Gates, its first policy director, in early 2022. Together they set a strategy to win over other industries that could benefit from the sector like insurers and the legal profession.

“With policy you never know which one thing swung it, but we worked hard to create a large coalition of industries adjacent to the sector,” Gates said. “That gave us a strong voice with the government as we were not just speaking as the [automated vehicles] sector.”

Several of those politicians posted favorable videos on their social media channels, and along with rides with Bill Gates, an investor, and a BBC News team, the clips were viewed by millions of people.

Lawmakers on the House of Commons’ transport committee, who visited last March, subsequently recommended the government introduce a “self-drive bill” in September.

“We were really helped by the transport committee’s inquiry and they were extremely helpful in making the case to the government and to the Department for Transport,” Gates explained. “That inquiry had a very big impact in creating very vocal supporters in government who carried that to the DfT and then to the cabinet.”

Wayve also convinced a group of supportive politicians to form an “all party parliamentary group” (APPG) on Self-Driving Vehicles in early 2023, with Hanbury providing secretariat support. The group was backed by insurance group AXA and law firm Burges Salmon.

The lobbying pitch was built on road safety, reducing congestion and economic wins, Gates said. “We were very focused on safety but there needs to be more than that. We made sure that the benefits beyond safety were well known.”

Transport Secretary Harper, one of those to visit Wayve’s King’s Cross headquarters, was convinced of the benefits, but he had to get the approval of the U.K. Cabinet and No. 10 Downing Street.

Wayve linked the bill to the U.K.’s tech and AI ambitions which helped it get backing from Cabinet members, including Chancellor Jeremy Hunt.

The government hadn’t planned to bring in a specific self-drive bill. Instead the legislation was initially introduced as a much wider Future of Transport Bill, and would have also addressed novel forms of transport like electric scooters.

But last summer Harper’s team decided to strip out other parts of the bill and just focus on self-driving vehicles. That led to a slimmed down law that was easier to pass – exactly as Wayve wanted.

Everyone’s a winner

The industry’s last chance to get the law on to the statute books before an election this year was November’s King’s Speech, an occasion full of pomp where the government sets out its legislative agenda for the parliament.

The bill was one of the few new pieces of legislation to make the cut, and on Wednesday this week completed its passage through parliament, meaning it will shortly become law.

On Tuesday, Sunak and Donelan took a victory lap with Kendall at Wayve’s headquarters, celebrating the $1 billion fundraising round, while a government press release hailed its own policies for facilitating the investment.

David Wilson

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