PeopleofSuperintelligence

Builder

Alex Kendall

As of October 2026, Alex Kendall is Wayve’s co-founder and CEO, where the company builds embodied AI for consumer cars and robotaxis. He grew up in Christchurch, studied mechatronics engineering at Auckland, and completed a Cambridge PhD in deep learning, computer vision and robotics. At Cambridge, he worked on SegNet for road-scene recognition and co-authored the 2018 paper Learning to Drive in a Day. He was Wayve’s CEO during the company’s 2022 Series B round and co-authored GAIA-1, a world model for autonomous driving, in 2023. He received the 2025 Princess Royal Silver Medal and an OBE for AI services, and was named to MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35.

Now at
Wayve

Timeline

  1. 2011

    Mechatronics at Auckland

    Raised in Christchurch, he enters the second year of a mechatronics engineering degree at the University of Auckland in 2011.

  2. 2015

    SegNet for road scenes

    In 2015, he contributes to SegNet, a deep-learning algorithm for real-time pixel-level recognition on driving scenes.

  3. 2017

    A doctorate and Wayve

    He completes a Cambridge PhD in deep learning, computer vision and robotics and is elected a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College in 2017. While writing his thesis, he co-founds Wayve in 2017.

  4. 2018

    Learning to Drive in a Day

    He co-authors Learning to Drive in a Day in 2018, demonstrating deep reinforcement learning for autonomous driving from a single monocular image.

  5. 2022

    A Wayve Series B

    In 2022, he is Wayve’s CEO as the company raises a $200 million Series B round to develop AV2.0.

  6. 2023

    The GAIA-1 world model

    He co-authors GAIA-1 in 2023, a generative world model that uses video, text and action inputs to generate realistic driving scenarios.

  7. 2025

    Princess Royal Silver Medal

    In 2025, he receives the Princess Royal Silver Medal for contributions to UK engineering. He receives an OBE for services to artificial intelligence in the 2025 New Year Honours. MIT Technology Review names him an Innovator Under 35 in 2025.

  8. As of October 2026

    Wayve CEO in embodied AI

    As of October 2026, he is Wayve’s co-founder and CEO. The company builds embodied-AI foundation models for consumer cars and robotaxis. In May 2026, he speaks for Wayve in a UK government partnership on self-driving technology.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Alex Kendall yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Alex Kendall: the road less travelled auckland.ac.nz. Checked 15 October 2026.
  2. Alumni stories: Meet Alex Kendall – the autonomous vehicle pioneer with global ambition eng.cam.ac.uk. Checked 15 October 2026.
  3. Alumnus Dr Alex Kendall accelerates the development of self-driving cars trin.cam.ac.uk. Checked 15 October 2026.
  4. Alex Kendall alexgkendall.com. Checked 15 October 2026.
  5. Tech Unheard Episode 6: Alex Kendall newsroom.arm.com. Checked 15 October 2026.
  6. Learning to Drive in a Day arxiv.org. Checked 15 October 2026.
  7. GAIA-1: A Generative World Model for Autonomous Driving arxiv.org. Checked 15 October 2026.
  8. AI innovators win Princess Royal Silver Medals for brain-inspired systems and autonomous driving stemresources.raeng.org.uk. Checked 15 October 2026.
  9. Government and Wayve sign partnership to accelerate Britain’s self driving future gov.uk. Checked 15 October 2026.