Wayve

Cavendish Supports Crowdcube on Wayve’s $85m Employee Share Sale – the First Employee Liquidity Transaction on the London Stock Exchange’s Private Securities Market

Cavendish acted as Trading Registered Auction Agent to Crowdcube on the transaction, the largest completed to date under the FCA’s PISCES framework.

Wayve, the $8.6bn pioneer in embodied AI for autonomous driving, has completed a landmark $85 million employee secondary share sale transaction – the first employee liquidity event run through the London Stock Exchange’s Private Securities Market (PSM), and the largest to date under the FCA’s Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System (PISCES).

Crowdcube, Europe’s leading private market investment platform, managed the sell-side process for Wayve, enabling current employees with vested equity to unlock some of the value they have helped to create. 

Cavendish acted as Trading Registered Auction Agent to Crowdcube on the transaction.

The transaction represents a major milestone for UK capital markets – not only the first employee share sale on the PSM but also the largest transaction under the FCA’s PISCES (Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System) regulation to date.

Matt Cooper, Crowdcube co-CEO, said:

“This is what we hope will be the first of many of these transactions with other partners for Crowdcube – using our leading infrastructure to manage a complex employee liquidity transaction on the London Stock Exchange’s Private Securities Market – as we’ve done for Wayve in this instance.

As Europe’s leading private market liquidity platform, Crowdcube is seeing a massive increase in the number of companies looking to complete secondary share sales in the next 6-12 months. These are transactions for a wide variety of companies, providing liquidity for employees and early stage investors that Crowdcube can support, including through the Private Securities Market.”

Emily Watts, Head of Corporate Development at Cavendish, said:

“This deal shows what’s possible when regulators, exchanges and market participants move fast together. The Private Securities Market has gone from concept to commercial reality in short order. Supporting Wayve – one of the UK’s great scale-up success stories – proves the UK has seized a strategic opportunity, building a market that gives companies, founders, employees and investors real choice over how ownership changes over time. Companies are staying private for longer, making trusted, efficient liquidity essential infrastructure, not a nice-to-have. We’re proud to have helped Crowdcube define what that infrastructure looks like.

This is the kind of innovation that keeps London competitive – attracting world-class companies and global capital, and cementing its place as a leading home for growth businesses. This transaction is likely to be remembered as a key step in building the UK’s next-generation capital markets infrastructure.”