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Waymo, the Alphabet-owned self-driving car company, is in talks with investors for a funding round that would value the company at more than $100bn as it gears up to deploy in more big cities.
The company has discussed raising between $15bn and $20bn in a round early next year led by its parent company, according to people familiar with the matter.
The funding talks were still at an early stage, the people said. Waymo declined to comment. The Information first reported the talks.
The fresh funding at a 12-figure valuation would be a boost to Waymo, which has led several rivals, including Elon Musk’s Tesla, in deploying paid robotaxi services in the US.
Waymo plans to expand to a dozen cities next year, including its first European market in London, after the UK government accelerated rules to permit fully driverless vehicles. It is also piloting services in Tokyo and targeting other US locations, including New York.
It already operates more than 250,000 rides per week across five US cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The company launched its first paid-for public services in Phoenix in 2020, well ahead of Tesla, which debuted with a pilot service in Austin in June, before rolling out in San Francisco. The Tesla service has a human supervisor in the passenger seat, while Waymo is unsupervised.
Zoox, an Amazon subsidiary, followed in September with limited free services in Las Vegas. It operates a purpose-built self-driving vehicle, in contrast to the retrofitted Jaguar-I-Pace SUVs in Waymo’s fleet.
Part of Google parent company Alphabet’s “other bets” division, Waymo raised $5.6bn in a funding round last October that valued it at more than $45bn. Andreessen Horowitz, Silver Lake, Tiger Global and T Rowe Price are all investors.
The company has more than 800 robotaxis operating a commercial service in the San Francisco Bay Area, with more than 2,000 across the US. Its robotaxis have now driven more than 100mn fully autonomous miles.
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