Waymo raises $16B to scale robotaxi fleet internationally

Waymo, the Alphabet-owned autonomous car firm, has raised $16 billion because it plans to develop its fleet of driverless taxicabs this yr to greater than a dozen new cities internationally, together with London and Tokyo.

Dragoneer Funding Group, DST International, and Sequoia Capital led the funding spherical, which now values Waymo at $126 billion, the firm said in a blog post Monday. Guardian firm Alphabet supported the spherical and maintained its place as majority investor.

The spherical additionally included important investments from Andreessen Horowitz and Mubadala Capital, in addition to Bessemer Enterprise Companions, Silver Lake, Tiger International, and T. Rowe Worth. Further buyers included BDT & MSD Companions, CapitalG, Constancy Administration & Analysis Firm, GV, Kleiner Perkins, Perry Creek Capital, and Temasek.

Waymo mentioned the funds will probably be used to gasoline its development, which has accelerated over the previous yr and doesn’t seem to be slowing. The corporate recently secured rides to and from San Francisco Worldwide Airport and has expanded its robotaxi service all through Northern California and a number of other main metropolitan areas in the U.S., together with Los Angeles, Austin, and Miami.

For years, the former Google self-driving venture slowly progressed ahead, testing its autonomous car tech on public roads in Silicon Valley and the Bay Space and offering the occasional public or media demo. In 2016, it made its first geographic leap ahead and commenced testing in Phoenix, the place it will definitely pulled its human safety driver out of the automobiles. Phoenix grew to become Waymo’s first robotaxi market, through which the public might hail driverless Chrysler Pacifica minivans.

Waymo pushed down the accelerator in August 2023 after receiving the closing essential allow to function a robotaxi service — and cost for rides — in California. It launched a restricted service in San Francisco, later increasing to a lot of the larger Bay Space, Silicon Valley, and extra not too long ago to the freeways that join the dozens of cities in the space. It additionally expanded to Los Angeles. The corporate launched in Austin and Atlanta in 2025 via a partnership with Uber. It kicked off the yr by expanding to Miami.

The geographic enlargement has translated to 400,000 rides supplied each week throughout six main U.S. metropolitan areas. The corporate mentioned that in 2025 alone, it greater than tripled its annual quantity to 15 million rides, surpassing 20 million lifetime rides to date.

“We are now not proving an idea,” the firm wrote in its weblog publish. “We are scaling a business actuality, laying the groundwork for ride-hailing operations in over 20 further cities in 2026, together with Tokyo and London.”

The speedy enlargement has additionally led to elevated scrutiny and criticism as Waymo’s robotaxis have made missteps and the know-how creates problems for some residents.

Some robotaxis have exhibited harmful behaviors notably at school zones. The Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration’s Workplace of Defects Investigation in addition to the Nationwide Transportation Security Board (NTSB) have opened investigations into the unlawful conduct of Waymo robotaxis round faculty buses. The NHTSA additionally launched one other investigation final week after a Waymo robotaxi hit a child close to a faculty. The kid, who sustained minor accidents, was struck at about 6 mph.