Self-driving technology company Waymo has raised $16 billion from investors, including Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Capital, to help the robotaxi operator expand its international footprint.
The latest investment round, which values the Alphabet subsidiary at $126 billion, was led by Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global and Sequoia Capital.
It includes significant investments from consortium members, including Andreessen Horowitz and Mubadala Capital, Waymo co-chief executives Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov said in a blog post.
“This capital underscores that the age of autonomous mobility at scale has arrived,” they said.
Mubadala Investment Company, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign investor, was an early investor in the self-driving technology and ride hailing company. It was part of Waymo’s $2.5 billion funding round in 2020.
Other global investors who joined the California-based company’s latest funding include US private equity company Silver Lake, Bessemer Venture Partners, Tiger Global, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity and Temasek, solidifying Waymo’s status as a “scalable solution for the future of transportation”, the company said.
Alphabet, which is also Google's parent company, is said to have contributed about $13 billion to the investment round, Bloomberg reported. Waymo confirmed “Alphabet’s strong sustained support as our majority investor” but did not reveal exact terms.
In July last year, Alphabet made a $5 billion multiyear investment in Waymo to help it further build its fleet and expand operations to new markets. “This infusion of capital will ensure we are positioned to move forward with unprecedented velocity, while maintaining our industry-leading safety standards,” Ms Mawakana and Mr Dolgov said.
Waymo’s focus is now global, with plans to scale operations and lay the groundwork for ride-hailing operations in over 20 additional cities this year, including Tokyo and London.
“From our recent launch in Miami to the new markets ahead, we are expanding our fleet and our world-class team to meet an exploding global demand for autonomous mobility,” Ms Mawakana and Mr Dolgov added.
Waymo has a lead on competitors including Tesla, which is operating limited driverless vehicle trials in Austin, and Amazon, which is trialling its Zoox robotaxi fleet in Las Vegas. Waymo runs its commercial autonomous ride-hailing services in about half a dozen US cities, providing more than 400,000 rides every week.
The company said in 2025 alone, it more than tripled the annual volume to 15 million rides.
“Waymo is an exceptional business, leveraging its compounding data advantage to usher in a new era of transportation and a safety culture that can save millions of lives,” said Konstantine Buhler, partner at Sequoia Capital.
