Waymo CEO John Krafcik announced Monday that his company amassed $2.25 billion in its external investment round. Considering Waymo is owned by Google parent Alphabet, one of the richest companies in the world, you’d think it’d be able to float some extra funding into autonomous development. However, even a company worth an estimated $1 trillion knows it’s better to source capital from outside the business — that must be on the first page of every tech company’s playbook.
Seen widely as the firm currently riding the tip of the autonomous spear, Waymo already operates self-driving shuttle programs (with a safety driver) in Arizona, with plans for expansion. The new funding aims to further those goals; however, with autonomous targets being missed by just about every company that bothered making them, we’ll wait to see what happens. The company is currently focused on getting its Waymo Driver system into more vehicles, starting with EVs and Class 8 trucks.
“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,” Krafcik said in a prepared statement.
“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.”
Private equity firm Silver Lake Partners led the money rush, along with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Mubadala Investment Co. Additional investments reportedly came via venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Magna International, AutoNation and Alphabet itself — though Waymo did not say how much came from its parent company.
[Images: Waymo]
Nice buzzwords, Waymo. Your investors will never see that money again.
Never say never. Investing is all about risk and reward.
Yeah, but it’s going to take waymo money, waymo, time, and waymo research to get a working product.
They could do what Tesla is doing and charge their customers $7000 for something they’ll never get.
Sometimes it is to hedge against a competitor getting in before you do, in this case they may just want to license the tech.
Speculation — Waymo has worked out what anyone with a bit of imagination like many here already have. This autonomous stuff is Waymo difficult than the Silicon Valley nerds excepting Tesla thought it would be six or seven years ago. So instead of sticking parent Google with the bill for not much in the way of advancement, they thought it wise to spread the loss with those still on the learning curve. Tesla otoh thinks it has got the problem licked, but then reality is a sometime thing with that outfit and on this file unwarranted hubris reigns.