- Waymo, the self-driving vehicle company that is a spin-out of Google parent company Alphabet, announced it raised $2.25 billion
Waymo, the self-driving vehicle company operating under Google’s parent company Alphabet, just announced its first external round of funding. Until now, the company was financed through Alphabet. And Waymo CEO John Krafcik was reporting to the heads of Alphabet.
Now Waymo has raised a $2.25 billion round from external investors including auto supplier Magna, AutoNation, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and the Abu Dhabi state investment arm Mubadala. Alphabet also participated in this round.
Waymo’s decision to raise funding from external sources is similar to an approach by GM’s Cruise and Ford’s Argo. Cruise had raised over $3 billion in funding from investors like SoftBank, T. Rowe Price, Honda, and GM. And one of Argo’s biggest investors is Volkswagen.
Back in 2018, Waymo launched a self-driving taxi service in Arizona. And the company is now planning to start a delivery service called Waymo Via. So far, Waymo’s vehicles have driven over 20 million miles on public roads and over 10 billion miles in computer simulation since 2009. Originally, Waymo started out as a research and development project at Google in 2009.
“With this injection of capital and business acumen, alongside Alphabet, we’ll deepen our investment in our people, our technology and our operations, all in support of the deployment of the Waymo Driver around the world,” said Krafcik in a blog post.
Waymo is not the only Google spin out that raised funding from external sources. Alphabet’s life sciences unit Verily had raised $1 billion last year from a number of investors including Silver Lake.
In connection with this funding round, representatives of Silver Lake and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board will be taking board seats at the company.
“Waymo is the proven leader in self-driving technology, is the only autonomous vehicle company with a public ride-hailing service, and is successfully scaling its fully driverless experience,” added Egon Durban, Co-CEO of Silver Lake and nominee for Waymo’s Operating Board. “We’re deeply aligned with Waymo’s commitment to making our roads safer, and look forward to working together to help advance and scale the Waymo Driver in the U.S. and beyond.”
