Alphabet’s Waymo Closes Largest Ever Funding Round Worth $5.6B

Alphabet Inc’s ($GOOG) ($GOOGL) autonomous driving unit Waymo announced on Friday it has closed its largest ever funding round worth $5.6 billion.

The funding round was led by Alphabet, with continued participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, Perry Creek,  Silver Lake, Tiger Global, and T. Rowe Price.

“With this latest investment, we will continue to welcome more riders into our Waymo One ride-hailing service in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, and in Austin and Atlanta through our expanded partnership with Uber,” the company said. “We’ll also continue advancing the Waymo Driver — our AI-powered autonomous driving system — to support a variety of business applications over time.”

Waymo started as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009 and, so far, has served over two million rider-only trips.

On Friday, Alphabet Class C shares were trading higher by over 1.5%. However, retail sentiment on Stocktwits continued to trend in the ‘neutral’ territory (48/100).

In September, Uber Technologies (UBER) and Waymo extended their partnership to bring autonomous ride-hailing to Austin and Atlanta.

Beginning in early 2025, Waymo and Uber will bring autonomous ride-hailing to Austin and Atlanta, only on the Uber app.

The ride-hailing firm will manage and dispatch a fleet of Waymo’s fully autonomous, all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles.

Uber said that riders who request an UberX, Uber Green, Uber Comfort, or Uber Comfort Electric may be matched with a Waymo for qualifying trips.

Meanwhile, Alphabet shares have gained over 19% since the beginning of the year.

Also See: Upexi Shares Zoom As Firm Vows To Examine Possible Stock Manipulation After Reverse Split, Grabs Retail's Attention

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