Waymo, the Autonomous Driving institutional sector of Google parent Alphabet, has raised about 23 trillion won in new funding, lifting its valuation to around 183 trillion won, while accelerating the expansion of its global Autonomous Driving services.
Bloomberg and Reuters reported on the 2nd (local time) that Waymo has closed a $16 billion funding round. In this round, Waymo's corporations value was assessed at $126 billion, or about 182.6 trillion won in Hanwha.
This is nearly a threefold increase in less than two years compared with the $45 billion assessed in the transfer funding round held in Oct. 2024.
Waymo said in a statement that Sequoia Capital, DST Global, and Dragoneer Investment Group led the round. Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds Mubadala Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Silver Lake also participated. Parent Alphabet also took part in the fundraising but did not disclose specific terms. Earlier reports said Alphabet would invest $13 billion.
Waymo co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov said in a blog post, "With this capital inflow, we have laid the foundation to expand at an unprecedented pace while maintaining industry-leading safety standards," signaling a full-fledged push for global expansion.
Waymo is currently the only company in the United States offering a paid robotaxi service without safety operators. It operates in six U.S. cities, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta, and plans to expand to additional U.S. cities and the United Kingdom within the year. Weekly trips are said to total about 400,000.
However, competition in the Autonomous Driving market is intensifying. Tesla has made robotaxis a core strategy, operating the service on a limited basis in Austin, and is offering a ride-hailing service with safety operators onboard in San Francisco. Amazon's Autonomous Driving institutional sector Zoox is also running a free robotaxi service on and around the Las Vegas Strip and in parts of San Francisco.
Safety controversies around Autonomous Driving technology also persist. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration under the U.S. Department of Transportation has launched an investigation into an incident last month involving a child and a Waymo vehicle near an elementary school in California.