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Waymo recently closed A $5.6 billion Series C financing round led by parent company Alphabet and joined by an elite group of Silicon Valley’s most prominent investment firms. This investment boosts Waymo’s total value to more than $45 billion. According to Bloomberg News.
Alphabet had previously announced in July that it had pledged another $5 billion to Waymo, but remained tight-lipped on the details, saying only that it was a “multi-year” commitment. Andreessen Horowitz, Silver Lake, Fidelity, Tiger Global, Berry Creek, and T. Rowe Price have all joined the round. Waymo declined to say how much each of them invested.
It’s Waymo’s second external fundraising round, and its first since its $2.25 billion Series B in 2020 that eventually grew to $3.2 billion. The self-driving vehicle company says it will use the funds to expand into new cities and further develop its autonomous capabilities in “business applications.”
In some ways, Waymo is a much different company now than it was when it raised that last round. At the time, the company was still moving toward autonomous trucking efforts, but has since withdrawn from them.
Instead, the company focused almost entirely on automated ride-hailing service. The bet paid off. Waymo now operates commercial taxi services in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, and is expanding to Austin and Atlanta. It offers paid rides to more than 100,000 customers weekly across those top three markets and offers rides to and from the airport in Phoenix. It operates on highways in the Phoenix and San Francisco areas.
This story has been updated to include Waymo’s new reported valuation following the funding announcement.
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