# Amar Shah

> Amar Shah is a British machine-learning researcher, entrepreneur and investor who co-founded Wayve with Alex Kendall in 2017 and served as its first CEO before stepping back from day-to-day leadership in 2020. A Cambridge mathematics and machine-learning graduate with experience at Goldman Sachs and NASA, he later became an entrepreneur in residence at firstminute capital and founder and partner at Dhyan Ventures.

- **Role:** Founder & Partner at Dhyan Ventures
- **Organizations:** Wayve, Dhyan Ventures, firstminute capital, University of Cambridge, NASA Ames Research Center, Goldman Sachs
- **Nationality:** British
- **Education:** MMath, Mathematics, University of Cambridge, PhD, Machine Learning, University of Cambridge, Postdoctoral research, Machine Learning, University of Cambridge
- **Known for:** Co-founded Wayve and served as its first CEO from 2017 to 2020., Co-authored Learning to Drive in a Day, demonstrating on-vehicle reinforcement learning for lane following., Received a Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship and an EPSRC Doctoral Prize for his research.

## Career timeline

- **2006-2010** — Studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge.
- **2010-2012** — Worked at Goldman Sachs as a quantitative strategist.
- **2012-2016** — Completed a machine-learning PhD at Cambridge in Zoubin Ghahramani’s group.
- **2014** — Co-authored Student-t Processes as Alternatives to Gaussian Processes.
- **2016** — Worked as a machine-learning researcher at NASA Ames Research Center.
- **2017** — Co-founded Wayve with Alex Kendall and became its first CEO; co-authored research on autonomous-vehicle safety.
- **2018** — Co-authored Learning to Drive in a Day and spoke at MIT CSAIL.
- **2019** — Wayve raised a $20 million Series A to support London trials.
- **2020** — Stepped back from day-to-day Wayve leadership.
- **2020-2021** — Entrepreneur in residence at firstminute capital.
- **2022** — Became founder and partner at Dhyan Ventures.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Wayve and served as its first CEO from 2017 to 2020.
- Co-authored Learning to Drive in a Day, demonstrating on-vehicle reinforcement learning for lane following.
- Received a Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship and an EPSRC Doctoral Prize for his research.
- Received a Planetary Defense Award for machine-learning work at NASA.

## Latest updates

- **2026-09** — Wayve, which Shah co-founded but no longer leads day to day, announced a definitive production agreement with Mercedes-Benz.
- **2026-04** — Wayve announced a $60 million Series D extension from AMD, Arm and Qualcomm Ventures; this occurred after Shah’s operating tenure.
- **2026-02** — Wayve announced a $1.2 billion Series D at an $8.6 billion valuation; this is a company financing figure, not Shah’s personal wealth.
- **2025-08** — Appeared on Bae HQ’s episode 253 to discuss Wayve, investing and lessons in company building.

## Links

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amar-shah-2688691b/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/amar-shah
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-23