Waymo, the self-driving car subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, announced the completion of its largest funding round to date, securing $5.6 billion to accelerate its autonomous vehicle initiatives. The investment aims to expand the company’s robotaxi services and explore new business applications for its driverless technology, although Waymo’s rollout has so far faced its share of challenges.
Currently operating in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, Waymo plans to use the new funds to expand to additional cities like Austin and Atlanta by 2025. The company is also testing its vehicles in places with colder climates and more complex urban areas, including Buffalo, New York City, and Washington, D.C., to prepare for future deployments. Waymo said that this expansion will be accompanied by improvements to its offerings in existing markets.
Since 2020, the company’s driverless cars have been involved in at least 192 reported collisions. While Waymo claims these incidents are statistically fewer than those involving human-driven vehicles, some incidents have raised safety concerns.
In early October 2024, a passenger was reportedly trapped inside a Waymo robotaxi while it was being vandalized. Additionally, over the summer of 2024, neighbors near a Waymo parking lot in San Francisco complained of cars honking at each other throughout the night for several weeks.
Despite these setbacks, investors lauded Waymo’s technology, citing it as the safest and most advanced in the industry. The company’s vehicles have logged over 25 million miles on public roads, equal to the distance from Earth to Venus during its closest approach. As of August 2024, Waymo reported providing 100,000 customer trips every week.
The new funding will not only support the robotaxi business but also enable Waymo to explore other uses for its “Waymo Driver” technology. Potential business applications include food and package deliveries, long-haul trucking, and even privately owned autonomous vehicles.
