A Waymo robotaxi operating in San Francisco
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Waymo, the leading operator of artificial intelligence-enabled robotic taxis, has raised $5.6 billion in its biggest funding round as the Alphabet Inc. unit expands ride services in three major U.S. cities and prepares to launch in two new ones.
The amount is more than 10% above what parent Alphabet said it would invest earlier this year and includes additional backing from previous investors Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, Perry Creek, Silver Lake, Tiger Global and T. Rowe Price, Waymo said in a blog post on Friday. The Mountain View, California-based company currently books more than 100,000 paid rides a week.
“With this latest investment, we will continue to welcome more riders into our Waymo One ride-hailing service in San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and in Austin and Atlanta through our expanded partnership with Uber,” co-CEOS Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov said in the post. Testing of Waymo robotaxis is also to begin in Buffalo, New York City and Washington D.C.
The additional money pushes total funding for Waymo’s operations well past $10 billion since it began developing autonomous technology 15 years ago as the Google Self-Driving Car Project. Though dozens of competitors have emerged since then, the company currently has no meaningful competition in the robotaxi business in the U.S. Elon Musk hopes to change that by repositioning Tesla as an autonomous driving company though it’s not at all clear when or if his company can safely rival Waymo.
Despite growing revenue, which may approach $100 million this year, Waymo remains a risky bet. It has so far avoided major accidents that stymied rival programs at Uber and Cruise, as well as the crashes and fatal accidents linked to Tesla’s partially automated software, though federal safety regulators are investigating several collisions and traffic violations involving its robotaxis that didn’t result in injuries or fatalities.
“The company has built the safest product in the autonomous vehicle ecosystem as well as the best,” Chase Coleman, founder of Tiger Global, said in the post.