Waymo collects 2.25 billion dollars in autonomous units for the first external fundraising

Waymo has just announced an important step: its first external fundraising. The autonomous division of Alphabet raised $ 2.25 billion in a roundtable led by Silver Lake, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Mubadala Investment Company , the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi. Additional investors include Magna International, Andreessen Horowitz and AutoNation, as well as Alphabet.

To date, Waymo has been an outlier in the world of autonomous cars, relying almost exclusively on the largesse of its parent company. That changes with today's announcement, transforming Waymo into an uncertain but potentially lucrative new phase.

Waymo CEO John Krafcik presented it as an extension of the list of automakers, fleet logistics companies, transit agencies and delivery companies with which Waymo already has partnerships. They have expanded this team, adding financial investors and important strategic partners who bring decades of experience in investing and supporting successful technology companies in building transformative products, Krafcik said in a statement. With this injection of capital and business acumen, alongside Alphabet, deepen our investment in our employees, our technology and our operations, all in support of the deployment of the Waymo Driver worldwide.

Waymo adds external representation to its board of directors, including representatives from Silver Lake and the Canadian Pension Fund, said Krafcik. These representatives will join him and other Waymo officials, as well as leaders of Alphabet.

This cycle of external investment has been long overdue. Reports that Waymo was looking for outside investors surfaced almost a year ago, when L & # 39; information told me that the Google split was looking for capital at a valuation at least several times that of Cruise, the majority affiliate of General Motors worth nearly $ 15 billion.

Today's announcement will certainly be good news for the respective financial teams of Waymos and Alphabets, who are responsible for keeping the cash-intensive operation afloat. Waymo is said to cost Alphabet nearly $ 1 billion and reports only paltry revenue thanks to its limited commercial robotic taxi service in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona.

Waymo says the money will help speed up plans to commercialize its revolutionary self-driving technology. From the ad:

Waymo One, the world's first public self-driving self-driving service, serves thousands of customers in Arizona and has already provided thousands of driverless trips to our cyclists in a mixed-use market area at high speed greater than San Francisco. The Waymo driver is now deployed on a variety of vehicle platforms and commercial applications, including Waymo Via, which focuses on all forms of freight delivery.

Some notes here. Waymo only provides its driverless journeys (i.e. without a safety driver) to customers who have signed NDAs with the company and not as part of its Waymo One service for consumers. The comparison with San Francisco is remarkable because this is where Cruise tests its autonomous cars in the hope of eventually launching a similar transportation service (which he says is more complex than the suburbs of Phoenix). The fifth generation of the Waymos autonomous driving system should be deployed this year as part of its new fleet of Jaguar I-Paces. And to my knowledge, this is the first time that Waymo has given a name to its autonomous truck and its delivery activities: Waymo Via.

What about these investors? Silver Lake is a Menlo Park venture capital firm that invests in Alibaba, GoDaddy and Broadcom, among other tech companies. More recently, Silver Lake has helped Dell re-enter the public market after five years as a private company. Investment company Mubadala manages more than $ 225 billion in assets, owns stakes in some of the largest Abu Dhabi companies, as well as stakes in global companies such as the Spanish company of energy Cepsa and Austria OMV. Sovereign wealth fund recently involved in scandal involving his dealings with a Malaysian state fund.

Auto parts supplier Magna recently participated in the construction of an electric car concept for Sony. He also teamed up with Lyft to help build autonomous cars for the transportation business until recently, when the business said it was transition to driver assistance technology. He also helps manage the Waymos plant in the Detroit area. AutoNation has an existing partnership with Waymo; the automotive giant currently delivering Toyota sells parts in the Phoenix market using automated Waymo vehicles.