Waymo raises $2.25 billion

Waymo has announced its first external investment round to the tune of $2.25 billion led by Silver Lake, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Mubadala Investment Company with participation from Magna International, Andreessen Horowitz, AutoNation, as well as its parent company Alphabet.

Established in 2009, the Mountain View, CA-based company is the only autonomous vehicle company with public ride-hailing service. Its Waymo Driver, which has driven more than 20 million miles on public roads across over 25 cities, is now deployed across a variety of vehicle platforms and business applications, including Waymo Via that transports goods from point A to point B.

And its Waymo One, the world’s first public self-driving ride-hailing service which operates in Arizona, has already provided thousands of fully driverless rides to riders, in a high-speed mixed usage market area larger than San Francisco.

“We’ve always approached our mission as a team sport, collaborating with our OEM and supplier partners, our operations partners, and the communities we serve to build and deploy the world’s most experienced driver. Today, we’re expanding that team, adding financial investors and important strategic partners who bring decades of experience investing in and supporting successful technology companies building transformative products. 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.” – John Krafcik, CEO, Waymo.