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British autonomous vehicle company Wayve is to trade its shares on the London Stock Exchange Group’s new private markets platform, becoming the first big company to use the system.
The self-drive start-up will sell shares next Wednesday on LSEG’s private markets system, according to a notice on the exchange’s website.
Wayve said it had launched an $85mn tender offer for employees’ stock. The full sum would be sold via the platform, said a person with knowledge of the matter.
The business, which was valued at $8.6bn in a funding round in February, is the first major company to use the platform, which allows founders, employees and investors to sell shares in private companies on specific days.
The Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System has been supported by UK chancellor Rachel Reeves, who has said it will “reinvigorate the UK’s capital markets”. The system has been touted by the government as a way to eventually encourage more companies to list in London, at a time when high-profile businesses have dropped their listings in the city or sought to float elsewhere.
Wayve has already raised significant sums this year as it prepares to launch its first robotaxi service in London.
The start-up took in more than $1.2bn in its February fundraising from investors including carmakers Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis and Nissan, then in April raised a further $60mn from chipmakers AMD, Arm and Qualcomm. Other big investors include Microsoft, Nvidia and Uber. The company was valued at $8.6bn in those deals.
The secondary offering will allow employees to cash out some of their shares in the nine-year-old company, whose headcount has more than doubled to about 1,200 people over the past year.
“This tender, led by existing and new investors, is one way of ensuring we can retain the best of the best in our industry,” Wayve said.
Julia Hoggett, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, said Wayve’s plan “reflects the growing momentum” behind the private market system.
Investment company Tradable Private Equity was the first company to use LSEG’s platform for its sale in March of shares in a structure that held stock in Oxford Science Enterprises, a venture capital firm backing technology and life sciences businesses. TPE plans a second share sale in July.
Wayve is based in King’s Cross, part of a booming AI market in the formerly downtrodden London neighbourhood.
Uber and Wayve have opened a waiting list for passengers who want to try out its robotaxi service in London, which chief executive Alex Kendall said at London Tech Week in June would begin “very soon” with a small initial fleet that would include a safety driver behind the wheel.
The launch has been slightly delayed as the companies work through the regulatory steps needed to deploy autonomous vehicles commercially on London’s streets for the first time.
“There’s been a lot of work to align various stakeholders around the promise of this technology,” Kendall said. “With anything disruptive it disrupts thinking and that’s challenging to work through.”