Even before the extra $750 million, Waymo’s funding round was among the largest, if not the largest, in multibillion-dollar investments around self-driving cars. General Motors’ Cruise unit raised $1.15 billion in May 2019, while Uber closed $1 billion from the Softbank Vision Fund in April 2019. Nuro raised $840 million from the SoftBank Vision Fund in February 2019.
During the Morgan Stanley investor conference on Monday, Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat reportedly said the outside investors will help Waymo be more disciplined.
Waymo One is the first publicly accessible self-driving ride-hailing service. While it has provided thousands of rides to customers in Arizona since late 2017, it hasn’t generated anywhere near the amount of revenue required to offset the costs of developing the technology and operating the business. The $3 billion round will help Waymo on its path to scale its self-driving technology.
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