You could soon see driverless vehicles on London's roads thanks to a £26.8m funding scheme

Startup, FiveAI has closed a major £14m Series A equity financing round, which adds to £12.8m in government funding for FiveAI’s StreetWise project.

The company aims to lead the UK’s build in technology for urban driverless vehicles on the roads, and this investment is said to be the largest venture funding for any of its kind to date.

Lakestar Capital led the round, with FiveAI’s existing investors including Amadeus Capital Partners to Kindred.

Dharmash Mistry, of Lakestar Capital to join the FiveAI board, said: “FiveAI is a fantastic example where the UK has the talent, ambition and market to build a truly successful technology-led company.

FiveAI can play a vital role in reducing congestion, emissions, costs, accidents and journey times, boosting the city’s economy at the same time.“

StreetWise is bringing several parties, alongside FiveAI, to deliver a safe trial in this driverless car service in London towards the end of 2019. Those parties include the UK’s largest private motor insurer Direct Line Group and McLaren Applied Technologies.

Greg Clark, business and energy secretary, thinks self-driving vehicles are the “future”, saying: “The UK has a great opportunity to lead this technology revolution…

“The government is determined to ensure [the country] becomes the go-to place for the development of the next generation of vehicles as part of our Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, in the StreetWise Consortium.

“This has helped FiveAI attract significant inward investment for a project that will help build on our reputation in self-driving technology and support our clean, low-carbon agenda.”

The government and Series A funding will enable FiveAI to develop and demonstrate autonomous SAE level 4 urban technology. FiveAI is hoping that 2019 will see the launch of a supervised trial of a pilot fleet of autonomous vehicles on London roads.

The trial will aim to show that such technology is sufficiently mature to be safe in urban environments like London and can co-exist with human drivers, road users and pedestrians.

FiveAI’s co-founder and CEO, Stan Boland, commented: “London has one of the best public transport systems in the world… Cycling, walking, buses and trains offer great service, but some journeys are still being served by personal or individual transport.

“Initially we’ll target these journeys with our shared mobility solution which will also pave the way for potential large-scale autonomous public transport in the future.”

The StreetWise project aims to demonstrate how this technology can be used to build compelling service offers to recover commuting time, reduce costs, reduce accidents as well as lower congestion and emissions.

StreetWise is partnering with Transport for London (TfL) to make sure its service offering is always aligned to public transportation needs.

Amadeus Capital Partners and ARM Holdings’ co-founder, Dr Hermann Hauser KBE, also commented: “FiveAI represents the UK’s best opportunity to build a major, responsible player in autonomous vehicles.

“They have the team, the technology and now, with key support from the UK government, the capital to become our next industry-defining tech company.”

FiveAI was founded in September 2015, with the ambition of leveraging the UK’s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning talent into a huge company that can be useful for the UK’s transport sector.