Insider Brief
- Waymo closed a $5.6 billion investment round led by Alphabet, with support from major investors, to expand its autonomous ride-hailing service, Waymo One, to more riders in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and new cities like Austin and Atlanta through its Uber partnership.
- The company’s advancements in the AI-powered Waymo Driver system allow it to safely expand autonomous driving capabilities, including freeway operations and service at airports like Phoenix’s Sky Harbor, contributing to over 100,000 paid weekly trips — a tenfold increase from last year.
- Waymo’s latest innovations, like the 6th-generation Waymo Driver, enhance operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness, while initiatives like the safety impact hub emphasize Waymo’s commitment to transparency, rider safety, and community trust.
PRESS RELEASE — Waymo is excited to announce that we’ve closed an oversubscribed investment round of $5.6 billion, led by Alphabet, with continued participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, Perry Creek, Silver Lake, Tiger Global, and T. Rowe Price.
With the latest investment, Waymo stated plans to expand its Waymo One ride-hailing service to more riders in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta, the latter two through an expanded partnership with Uber. Waymo also expressed its continued focus on advancing the Waymo Driver, its AI-powered autonomous driving system, to support a variety of business applications over time.
Chase Coleman, founder of Tiger Global, remarked that customers have great confidence in Waymo, describing the company as having “built the safest product in the autonomous vehicle ecosystem as well as the best.” He added that Waymo’s ability to foster rider loyalty, secure key partnerships, and collaborate with automotive industry leaders reflects a “balance of ambitious goals with responsible execution,” positioning the company as an enduring leader in autonomous driving.
Silver Lake Co-CEO Egon Durban emphasized Waymo’s longstanding efforts to bring the potential of AI to transportation, commenting that while AI is just beginning to capture the public’s imagination, “Waymo has been working to bring its endless possibilities to the world of physical transportation for years.” Durban highlighted that the Waymo Driver builds 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.”
This year marked substantial commercial progress for Waymo, with expanded service areas for Waymo One in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, including curbside service at Sky Harbor International Airport. The company plans to begin serving riders in Austin and Atlanta in 2025 through its Uber partnership. Additionally, Waymo has initiated fully autonomous freeway operations in Phoenix and San Francisco, which contributed to providing over 100,000 paid weekly trips — a tenfold increase from the previous year.
With growing ridership, Waymo remains committed to enhancing the safety and mobility benefits of the Waymo Driver across more regions and improving operational capabilities. Recently, Waymo introduced the 6th-generation Waymo Driver, designed for optimized cost and enhanced functionalities. It is also testing its system in increasingly complex environments with road trips to cities like Buffalo, New York, and Washington, D.C.
In its commitment to building trust with riders and communities, Waymo has launched a safety impact hub that shares insights into how the Waymo Driver improves road safety. This hub complements the company’s published papers that detail its expanding safety record and highlight the positive impact of the Waymo Driver on road safety in the cities where it operates.
