Wayve appoints ex-Waymo finance chief as it gears up for autonomous deployment
Elisa de Martel, previously CFO at Alphabet's Waymo, has taken the same role at self-driving startup Wayve. She will oversee financial strategy as Wayve prepares to launch robotaxi and passenger vehicle products. The company, valued at $8.5 billion, has raised $3.2 billion and uses an end-to-end neural network approach.
De Martel's résumé spans both consumer hardware and autonomous mobility. Before her tenure at Waymo, where she helped steer the company through commercial expansion and a $5.6 billion funding round, she spent over a decade in manufacturing finance at Apple and served as CFO at Carbon, an industrial 3D printing firm. Her move to Wayve signals the startup's shift toward operational scale.
Wayve's technology differs from many rivals by relying on an end-to-end neural network trained purely on driving data, avoiding high-definition maps and hand-coded rules. The company has already partnered with Nissan and Stellantis, and recently launched public robotaxi rides in London with safety operators aboard, with Tokyo service expected next.
This leadership change could signal that Wayve is transitioning from research-stage experimentation to commercial reality. If its data-driven approach proves scalable, it may offer automakers a flexible alternative to hardware-heavy autonomous systems, potentially accelerating the availability of robotaxis and assisted-driving features in consumer vehicles. However, the company still faces the challenge of proving safety and reliability at scale, and its impact on riders, regulators, and competitors will depend on how smoothly it navigates this deployment phase.