Self-driving car project Waymo, owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has raised a cool $2.25 billion in a fundraising round led by Silver Lake, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Mubadala Investment Company, Tech Crunch reports. Other companies to have invested in Waymo include Magna, Andreessen Horowitz, and AutoNation.
This is the first time Waymo has secured external investments and comes as it continues to test its autonomous vehicle technologies across the United States, including in Florida, California, and the Phoenix area.
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“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,” Waymo chief executive John Krafcik said of the investments.
“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,” he continued.
In recent months, Waymo has started to expand beyond its existing self-driving vehicle fleet and Waymo One ride-hailing service that operates in some suburbs in Phoenix. In January, the company said it would begin mapping and eventually test autonomous long-haul trucks in Texas and New Mexico.
In addition, Waymo has announced plans to start selling its custom lidar sensors to companies outside of the self-driving car space, such as in the robotics, security, and agricultural fields.
Waymo is also in a partnership with Renault and Nissan to research how commercial autonomous vehicles could be used for passengers and packages in France and Japan.
