Waymo has announced its largest investment round to date. The company said in a release:
“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. We’ll also continue advancing the Waymo Driver — our AI-powered autonomous driving system — to support a variety of business applications over time.
“Customers love Waymo. The company has built the safest product in the autonomous vehicle ecosystem as well as the best,” said Chase Coleman, Founder of Tiger Global. “Their proven experience fostering rider loyalty, securing key partnerships, and collaborating with automotive industry leaders demonstrates their ability to balance ambitious goals with responsible execution, positioning them as the enduring leader in the space.”
“While AI is only just beginning to capture the public imagination, Waymo has been working to bring its endless possibilities to the world of physical transportation for years,” said Egon Durban, Co-CEO, Silver Lake. “The Waymo Driver leads in earning trust by safely actualizing the value and potential of AI through cutting-edge research, practical solutions, and a vastly expanding scope and scale of real world experience.”
This year has marked incredible commercial progress towards our mission to be the world’s most trusted driver. We’ve expanded our Waymo One service areas in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, including providing curbside service at Sky Harbor International Airport. Through our expanded partnership with Uber in Austin and Atlanta, we’ll begin to serve riders in those cities in 2025. To create an even more useful experience, we’ve begun fully autonomous freeway operations in Phoenix and San Francisco. These efforts have enabled us to provide over 100,000 paid weekly trips—a tenfold increase from last year.
As our Waymo One ridership grows, we remain focused on expanding the safety and mobility benefits of the Waymo Driver to more places while enhancing our operational capabilities. To this end, we recently introduced the 6th-generation Waymo Driver, optimized for cost and enhanced capabilities. We’re also broadening our horizons by testing our system in more complex environments through road trips to cities like Buffalo, New York, and Washington, D.C.”
