Self-driving vehicle company Waymo is planning to raise $15 billion in funding in the new year. The company plans to raise the amount from Alphabet, its parent company, as well as outside investors at a valuation as high as $110 billion, according to a CNBC report that cites persons familiar with the matter.
Waymo has, of late, been spending heavily to ramp up its fleet and expand to different regions. Waymo is now either operating its robotaxis, planning to launch service or starting to test its vehicles in 26 markets, in the U.S. and abroad.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Waymo will “meaningfully” contribute to Alphabet’s financials as soon as 2027, according to CNBC.
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If the company ends up raising as much as $15 billion, it would represent more than double the amount of its last funding round. That was a Series C round of $5.6 billion at a $45 billion valuation, which closed in October 2024. That round was led by Alphabet alongside previous investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, Perry Creek, Silver Lake, Tiger Global and T. Rowe Price. At the time, Waymo co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov said the funding would go toward expanding its robotaxi service.
Waymo currently offers paid ride services to the public in the Austin, San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Atlanta and Los Angeles markets. The company also plans to launch robotaxi services in Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego and Washington, D.C., next year. Waymo will also be launching its service in London in 2026, which will be the company’s first overseas service.
READ: Waymo to launch robotaxi services in Washington DC in 2026 (
Competitor Tesla recently came into the spotlight after one of its robotaxis was spotted driving on public roads in Austin without anyone in the driver’s seat or a safety monitor in the passenger seat. CEO Elon Musk confirmed that robotaxi testing has officially commenced, and the company will remove human safety monitors from its robotaxi cars by the end of the year. Much of Tesla’s $1.53 trillion valuation — the highest of any automaker globally — is tied to investor optimism around its self-driving technology and humanoid robot ambitions.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s Zoox began to offer free driverless rides to the public around the Las Vegas Strip and certain San Francisco neighborhoods this year.
Alphabet has a market capitalization of around $3.73 trillion, according to LSEG data.