Multi-billion Round 1 for Waymo

Additional investors hopping onto the USD 2.25 billion round include Magna International, Andreessen Horowitz, AutoNation, and Google parent company, Alphabet. The round comes on the heels of several operational and technical milestones, including hitting the 20-million-mile mark for the Waymo Driver, on public roads spanning 25 cities. The system has also banked 10 billion miles in a simulation environment. Additionally, Waymo's Detroit factory has shipped the company’s first vehicles (electric cars and Class 8 trucks) integrated with fifth-generation hardware, which includes newly enhanced computing and sensing capabilities, a company press release said. Waymo CEO John Krafcik said, "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.” Silver Lake Co-CEO Egon Durban said, “Waymo is the proven leader in self-driving technology, is the only autonomous vehicle company with a public ride-hailing service and is successfully scaling its fully driverless experience. We’re deeply aligned with Waymo’s commitment to making our roads safer and look forward to working together to help advance and scale the Waymo Driver in the U.S. and beyond.” Waymo One, touted as the “first public self-driving ride-hailing service,” began its “rider-only” (no driver) limited service in the Phoenix, Arizona area last fall. The Waymo Driver is now deployed across a variety of vehicle platforms and business applications, including trucking platform, Waymo Via.