External investments can prove that Waymo was able to convince its own value outside of Alphabet, which might be a significant signal for future investors. Alp

External investments can prove that Waymo was able to convince its own value outside of Alphabet, which might be a significant signal for future investors. Alphabet can (and will likely) invest $xB more money for initial business ramp-up but if you want to create the next Google probably money from their own pocket might not be enough. This is particularly important as they need to heavily invest into physical assets with very high upfront costs. FYI, Uber has 10 millions of drivers across the world and if you want to match that number, you're gonna need $100B even with super conservative assumption of $10k per car (and the actual cost will likely be much higher). Doing something like this by Alphabet alone is extremely risky given that the technology is still in a very young stage.