Money raised and spent at Waymo tops $25bn

Alphabet plus some outside investors have put another $5.6 billion into Waymo, Alphabet’s self driving car subsidiary.

Waymo is running Robotaxi services in San Francisco, Phoenix and LA using retro-fitted Jaguar EV’s and clocking up around 100,000 rides a week.

The new investment takes Waymo’s total funding to $10.85 billion. The company raised $2.25 billion in 2021 and $3 billion in 2020.

Between 2016, when Waymo became a separate subsidiary of Alphabet, and 2020, it is estimated that Waymo’s running cost was an average of about $2.7 billion a year. Before that, about $1.1 billion was spent in the early development phase from 2009-2015.

So the money raised and the money spent at Waymo amount to some $25.45 billion.

Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity Investments, T. Rowe Price Group Silverlake and others participated in the latest round but it is not known how much of it came from Alphabet or at what valuation the investment was made.

Waymo claims to be the company with the lowest number of self-driving car crashes at 0.41 per million miles. Tesla has the highest number – accounting for over half of all autonomous car crashes – and is now being investigated for false claims about its vehicles’ self-driving capabilites. GM’s Cruise self-driving unit has had its licence to test autonomous cars on public roads suspended after an accident in San Francisco.

In 2022, autonomous vehicles in California experienced 96.65 crashes per 1,000 vehicles, compared to the 6.95 crashes per 1,000 vehicles for all motor vehicles.