Waymo announced it has completed an oversubscribed funding round of $5.6 billion, the company’s largest investment round so far. Alphabet led this round, which continued to include Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Fidelity, Perry Creek, Silver Lake, Tiger Global, and T. Rowe Price.
The company said it will continue welcoming more riders on the Waymo One ride-hailing service in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles and in Austin and Atlanta through an expanded partnership with Uber. It will also continue advancing the Waymo Driver (AI-based autonomous driving system) to support various business applications.
This series C funding round raised Waymo’s total capital to $11.1 billion. The company raised $3 billion and $2.5 billion in two prior rounds.
KEY QUOTES:
“Customers love Waymo. The company has built the safest product in the autonomous vehicle ecosystem as well as the best. Their proven experience fostering rider loyalty, securing key partnerships, and collaborating with automotive industry leaders demonstrates their ability to balance ambitious goals with responsible execution, positioning them as the enduring leader in the space.”
-Chase Coleman, Founder of Tiger Global
“While AI is only just beginning to capture the public imagination, Waymo has been working to bring its endless possibilities to the world of physical transportation for years. The Waymo Driver leads in earning trust by safely actualizing the value and potential of AI through cutting-edge research, practical solutions, and a vastly expanding scope and scale of real world experience.”
-Egon Durban, Co-CEO, Silver Lake
“This year has marked incredible commercial progress towards our mission to be the world’s most trusted driver. We’ve expanded our Waymo One service areas in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, including providing curbside service at Sky Harbor International Airport. Through our expanded partnership with Uber in Austin and Atlanta, we’ll begin to serve riders in those cities in 2025. To create an even more useful experience, we’ve begun fully autonomous freeway operations in Phoenix and San Francisco. These efforts have enabled us to provide over 100,000 paid weekly trips—a tenfold increase from last year.”
“As our Waymo One ridership grows, we remain focused on expanding the safety and mobility benefits of the Waymo Driver to more places while enhancing our operational capabilities. To this end, we recently introduced the 6th-generation Waymo Driver, optimized for cost and enhanced capabilities. We’re also broadening our horizons by testing our system in more complex environments through road trips to cities like Buffalo, New York, and Washington, D.C.”
-Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov, Waymo Co-CEOs
