Waymo raises $16 billion from investors
The fresh capital comes from a diverse group of investors: Alphabet, the parent company of Google and Waymo, is continuing its “strong and continuous support as majority shareholder,” while venture capital firms Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global, and Sequoia Capital are leading the new funding round. In addition to the newly raised $16 billion, Waymo had already secured $11 billion in previous rounds, bringing the company’s total funding to approximately $27 billion.
Waymo’s valuation is also remarkable. Originating from the Google Self-Driving Car Project and still based in Mountain View, California, like Google, the company is now valued at $126 billion by investors. This is roughly equivalent to the combined market capitalisation of Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen—or BMW and Mercedes-Benz together. This highlights how strongly investors are betting on the future growth potential of autonomous driving (robotaxis, software, and data ecosystems), even though current revenues remain modest. After all, in funding rounds and stock markets, valuations prioritise future opportunities over present performance.
A new era of transport
“As a technology leader in the trillion dollar transportation market, Waymo has moved beyond research milestones to achieve operational excellence, tripling its weekly paid rides in just one year while maintaining customer delight,” said Konstantine Buhler, Partner at investor Sequoia. “Waymo is an exceptional business, leveraging its compounding data advantage to usher in a new era of transportation and a safety culture that can save millions of lives. We’re excited to partner with Tekedra, Dmitri and team as they expand the magic of the Waymo Driver to 20 additional cities and beyond.”
Waymo has declared 2026 as the year of massive expansion. While there were typically many months between launches in new cities in the past, the company plans to add 20 new cities this year. This includes its first markets outside the USA, namely London and Tokyo.
To date, Waymo has been active in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta. In the second half of January 2026, the service launched in Miami. Plans are already in place for launches this year in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. Additionally, Detroit, Las Vegas, and San Diego are already on the list, along with Denver, Nashville, and Washington, D.C.. On its website overview, Waymo also lists eleven more cities, such as New York, where “Driving Experiences” are or have been conducted. Waymo uses this term to describe cities where mapping drives and test drives with safety drivers take place.
Already 400,000 rides per week in only six cities
In its announcement about the funding round, Waymo also highlighted some notable milestones: in 2025, the company more than tripled its annual ride volume to 15 million rides and has already surpassed the 20 million mark in total. Currently, Waymo is conducting over 400,000 rides per week in the six major US metropolitan regions mentioned above. Over more than 127 million miles (around 204 million kilometres) of fully autonomous driving, Waymo claims to have reduced the number of serious accidents by 90% compared to human-driven cars.
However, accidents cannot be entirely avoided, even by robotaxis. Recently, a primary school child in Santa Monica was hit by a Waymo vehicle after suddenly and unexpectedly running onto the road. Waymo emphasises that the robotaxi’s rapid response and strong braking prevented severe injuries to the child, which might have occurred with a human driver due to longer reaction times.
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