Waymo Receives $5.6 Billion in new Funding to Help Expand Self-Driving Services

Alphabet-backed Waymo has closed an oversubscribed investment round of $5.6 billion. The funding round was led by Alphabet, with continued participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, Perry Creek,  Silver Lake, Tiger Global, and T. Rowe Price.

With this latest investment, Waymo will continue to serve more riders into its Waymo One ride-hailing service in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.

Through an expanded partnership with Uber, it will begin to serve riders in Austin, Texas, and Altanta, Georgia, in 2025.

It will also continue advancing the Waymo Driver — our AI-powered autonomous driving system — to support a variety of business applications over time. 

Waymo has provide over 100,000 paid weekly trips so fart this year - a tenfold increase from 2023.

Chase Coleman, Founder of Tiger Global, says: "Customers love Waymo. The company has built the safest product in the autonomous vehicle ecosystem as well as the best. Their proven experience fostering rider loyalty, securing key partnerships, and collaborating with automotive industry leaders demonstrates their ability to balance ambitious goals with responsible execution, positioning them as the enduring leader in the space.”

Egon Durban, Co-CEO, Silver Lake, adds: “While AI is only just beginning to capture the public imagination, Waymo has been working to bring its endless possibilities to the world of physical transportation for years. The Waymo Driver leads in earning trust by safely actualizing the value and potential of AI through cutting-edge research, practical solutions, and a vastly expanding scope and scale of real world experience.”

In a blog, Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov, Waymo Co-CEOs, write: 'As our Waymo One ridership grows, we remain focused on expanding the safety and mobility benefits of the Waymo Driver to more places while enhancing our operational capabilities. To this end, we recently introduced the 6th-generation Waymo Driver, optimized for cost and enhanced capabilities. We're also broadening our horizons by testing our system in more complex environments through road trips to cities like Buffalo, New York, and Washington, D.C'.

Waymo recently launched a safety impact hub offering insights into how the Waymo Driver enhances road safety.