Waymo raises $16B to scale robotaxi fleet internationally

Waymo, the Alphabet-owned autonomous conveyance company, has raised $16 cardinal arsenic it plans to turn its fleet of driverless taxicabs this twelvemonth to much than a twelve caller cities internationally, including London and Tokyo.

Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global, and Sequoia Capital led the backing round, which present values Waymo astatine $126 billion, the institution said successful a blog post Monday. Parent institution Alphabet supported the circular and maintained its presumption arsenic bulk investor.

The circular besides included important investments from Andreessen Horowitz and Mubadala Capital, arsenic good arsenic Bessemer Venture Partners, Silver Lake, Tiger Global, and T. Rowe Price. Additional investors included BDT & MSD Partners, CapitalG, Fidelity Management & Research Company, GV, Kleiner Perkins, Perry Creek Capital, and Temasek.

Waymo said the funds volition beryllium utilized to substance its growth, which has accelerated implicit the past twelvemonth and doesn’t look to beryllium slowing. The institution recently secured rides to and from San Francisco International Airport and has expanded its robotaxi work passim Northern California and respective large metropolitan areas successful the U.S. including Los Angeles, Austin, and Miami.

For years, the erstwhile Google self-driving task dilatory progressed forward, investigating its autonomous conveyance tech connected nationalist roads successful Silicon Valley and the Bay Area and providing the occasional nationalist oregon media demo. In 2016, it made its archetypal geographic leap guardant and began investigating successful Phoenix, wherever it yet pulled its human information driver retired of the vehicles. Phoenix became Waymo’s archetypal robotaxi market, successful which the nationalist could hail driverless Chrysler Pacific minivans.

Waymo pushed down the accelerator successful August 2023 aft receiving the last indispensable licence to run a robotaxi work — and complaint for rides — successful California. It launched a constricted work successful San Francisco, aboriginal expanding to overmuch of the greater Bay Area, Silicon Valley, and much precocious to the freeways that link the dozens of towns successful the area. It besides expanded to Los Angeles. The institution launched successful Austin and Atlanta successful 2025 done a concern with Uber. It kicked disconnected the twelvemonth by expanding to Miami.

The geographic enlargement has translated to 400,000 rides provided each week crossed six large U.S. metropolitan areas. The institution said successful 2025 alone, it much than tripled its yearly measurement to 15 cardinal rides, surpassing 20 cardinal beingness rides to date.

“We are nary longer proving a concept,” the institution wrote successful its blog post. “We are scaling a commercialized reality, laying the groundwork for ride-hailing operations successful implicit 20 further cities successful 2026, including Tokyo and London.”

The accelerated enlargement has besides led to accrued scrutiny and disapproval arsenic Waymo’s robotaxis person made missteps and the exertion creates problems for immoderate residents.

Some robotaxis person exhibited unsafe behaviors peculiarly successful schoolhouse zones. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Defects Investigation arsenic good arsenic the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) person opened investigations into the amerciable behaviour of Waymo robotaxis astir schoolhouse buses. NHTSA besides launched different probe past week aft a Waymo robotaxi hit a child adjacent a school. The child, who sustained minnor injuries, was struck astatine astir 6 mph.