6 ms·

Alphabet to invest another $5B into Waymo

75 points by chrixf 2y ago

lysace 2y ago
That's like 10-15k SV yearly engineer salaries? Granted, it's "over the next few years".
mansoor_ 2y ago
When you have a tax bill like Alphabet's, these investments/write-offs seem less foolish.
- bigyikes 2y ago
  Are they foolish otherwise? They’re making 50,000+ rides per week already, with a very limited rollout. They only have to match the cost and convenience of Uber in order to utterly dominate the market. Once they fully solve self driving, which they inch ever closer towards doing, they can focus on cost reductions. Given that they don’t have to pay drivers, the potential profit margin is incredible. They will be fully uncontested soon. The only possible competition is Tesla, which has very impressive models, but is still far away from deploying actual robotaxis. I wish I could invest.
  - mansoor_ 2y ago
    The total investment is now approx $10B, with a revenue of $ 50 million (projection). Not great. Yeah, they don't pay drivers, but their cars' hardware costs mean that they won't break even with human-driven taxis for quite some time (unless they manage to decentralise the computing). To put some rough numbers to this, the sensor set in each car, is probably ~$75K (was initially $150K).
- linearrust 2y ago
  Imagine thinking alphabet views waymo as a tax write off.
  - obnauticus 2y ago
    It does. You can tax loss harvest from companies that you own, so it makes sense to have a bunch of bets that are money pits.
  - mansoor_ 2y ago
    Imagine thinking a 0.5% return on investment is a good use of money when treasury bonds return almost 5%.
    - linearrust 2y ago
      > Imagine thinking a 0.5% return on investment is a good use of money What is waymo's valuation? How much has alphabet invested in waymo? $10 billion? What could they sell it off for today? $30 billion? More? What would the ROI be? > when treasury bonds return almost 5% And yet alphabet invests in waymo? I wonder why? Oh that's right. Alphabet created waymo as tax write off scheme. Absolute genius. It's insane how ingnorant hn commentors are when it comes to finance, investment and technology. Every earnings and every financial news, it's the most ignorant who rant about nonsense confidently. But then again, according to the geniuses of hn, tesla, meta, bitcoin, etc would have imploded years ago.
      - mansoor_ 2y ago
        If it were publicly traded, it would have a P/E of 600. I'll help you out since you don't read, a normal P/E is 20-30. To say it is not a great financial investment is unequivocal. It is effectively a write-off for the foreseeable future. But that is not to say you shouldn't invest in difficult problems and try to solve them, even if they don't make money. This is one of them. I hope people do the same for other challenging problems.
        KoolKat23 2y ago
        P/E is a good measure for value stocks, where you're looking for consistent returns. Waymo still has to scale, the number means nothing. Tesla for example had a P/E ratio of 1000 two years ago. Okay it's still potentially overvalued and the share price has declined but their P/E ratio has dropped dramatically.
ra7 2y ago
Waymo has had a stellar year. 50,000+ rides per week across 3 major cities is nothing to scoff at, their users give overwhelmingly positive reviews. They are now testing their new purpose built robotaxis [1], which are supposed to be cheaper and get them to scale. They also don't seem to have any real competition right now. Cruise kind of self destructed and it came out today that GM is scrapping plans to build their 'Origin' robotaxis [2]. Tesla pushed out its robotaxi reveal and going by their track record, it won't exist for a long time (they are also nowhere close to doing fully autonomous rides [3], so there's that). Fully deserved, IMO. It's interesting how this funding round doesn't include external investors, but the previous two did. What's the calculation by Alphabet here? [1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/the-waymo-zeekr-robotaxi-has-come-to-san-francisco/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/the-waymo-zeekr-robotaxi-h... [2] https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/gms-cruise-abandons-origin-robotaxi-takes-583-million-charge/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/gms-cruise-abandons-origin... [3] https://www.teslafsdtracker.com https://www.teslafsdtracker.com
- pchristensen 2y ago
  If you think it's de-risked and ready to take off, why share the upside?
  - tourist2d 2y ago
    [dead]
- ugh123 2y ago
  >Fully deserved, IMO. It's interesting how this funding round doesn't include external investors, but the previous two did. What's the calculation by Alphabet here? Prediction: Google/Waymo will buy the smallest, yet capable, manufacturer of vehicles (electric or not), and vertically integrate.
  - pixelatedindex 2y ago
    Is this how Mitsubishi is going to reclaim their past glory? As a child I remember they had some iconic vehicles.
obnauticus 2y ago
I think the title is missing a word: “Alphabet _has to_ invest another $5B into Waymo”. I’d like to remind everyone that it’s still a taxi business with taxi margins (best case).
- Panzer04 2y ago
  If you aren't paying drivers, that's a lot of margin, yeah? If you're the only driverless game in town all of your vehicles can potentially earn an the salary of a driver, like 20$ an hour. They'd pay for themselves within a year pretty easily.
  - obnauticus 2y ago
    There are a ton of operational costs that Uber/Lyft have lobbied to give to cheap contractors with no benefits.
    - mlyle 2y ago
      Sure, Uber/Lyft have thus far been successful in claiming a really big share of the margin. But there's still not too much margin when the driver needs some comp. Waymo, on the flip side, has a lot of capital equipment added to cars to depreciate, but it's gotten way cheaper and stands to get much cheaper still.
      - spyspy 2y ago
        The cars may also last way longer when they’re driving around at 30mph and follow all the traffic laws to the letter. Humans are very hard on cars.
      - obnauticus 2y ago
        Can it? You still need a ton of very expensive infra, engineering, ops to manage all of this. Waymo has clearly been playing the “but it’ll be cheaper” game for a long, long time now. It makes sense if you squint really hard and fudge some numbers about unit economics. If the expected outcome is for it to be eventually cheaper, then why when I open the app does it costs almost twice as much as an Uber or Lyft? You’d think they would want to at least convince investors and train customers that the savings are real and they’re going to prove it by passing it on.
tizzy 2y ago
Slightly off-topic and maybe against the typical viewpoint of the site, but if they spent this much money on bike lanes, e-bikes and public transport, self driving cars (and all cars) would get much better.
- jeffbee 2y ago
  "They" spend a totally insane amount on roads. This year's Caltrans budget is $25 billion. They are planning to waste it all on widening roads that don't need it.
  - fire_lake 2y ago
    “We can’t have trains because it unfair to subsidize… oh wait!!”
- kieranmaine 2y ago
  One obstacle to increasing the amount of bikes lanes isn't money, but opposition to reducing the amount of curbside space for parking. My hope is AVs will reduce car ownership, which in turn reduces the amount of curbside space for required cars (Hopefully AVs can be parked at a few centralised parking lots). In turn this will allow for more bike lanes and bus lanes leading to improved active transport and public transport options.
- SllX 2y ago
  “They” is a private profit-seeking corporation. Local governments claim monopolies on roads and public transport in the places Waymo operates. Existing public transportation infrastructure is also being heavily underused as both MUNI and BART in the Bay Area are facing financial shortfalls from a lack of ridership, and of the ridership they do have, there is a lot more fare evasion than there used to be. There isn’t a single day that goes by when I’m passing through a station in San Francisco anymore that I don’t see someone (and usually multiple someones) hopping the gates into BART and several times a week I’ll see one of the fare gates to MUNI has been forced open and is out of service. MUNI and BART could probably stave off some of the losses if they just put actual police there to ticket and/or arrest fare evaders, at least when it’s busiest.
andrewmcwatters 2y ago
I'm so happy with Waymo, the current Waymo passenger experience is unparalleled. It's the future, for sure. It's true that there's no real competitor right now. I've been watching Cruise fleet vehicles drive around in Phoenix, so maybe eventually they'll gain some ground again. Waymo uses their own in-house lidar units as far as I know, but otherwise, it's a good time to be Ouster. VLP-16's cost about $5,000/unit right now.
andrewmcwatters 2y ago
The Waymo-Zeekr feels like what Apple wanted to accomplish with their car.
23B1 2y ago
google really, REALLY wants us to return to work
jbverschoor 2y ago
I heard they have $23B sitting there doing nothing
bagels 2y ago
Can this business make money? How much has been invested so far?
nserrino 2y ago
I've mostly switched over to Waymo, but had to take Ubers twice in the last month: * The first one, the driver made multiple racist remarks about different groups he observed as we drove. * The second one, the driver talked at length about UFOs and how they are real, for the entire 50 minute drive. Most drivers are totally normal and don't do things like that, but the tail end of negative experiences can be quite bad. Dirty cars, loud radios, body odor, and unsafe driving are all relatively common with human drivers. A Lyft driver I was riding with a few years back almost ran over a man in a wheelchair who had the right of way. Wait times are also more reliable so far with Waymo. It's not uncommon for an Uber/Lyft driver to accept a ride but then not drive toward you for 5+ minutes. Waymo has the advantage of predictability - both in terms of arrival time and overall travel time (whereas there is variance among human drivers). Sometimes I've had Waymos get stuck, but it usually resolves within 10-15 seconds. Given how smooth, predictable, and safe Waymos are, I don't see a strong reason to risk a negative experience with a human driver (beyond ideological reasons). However, I hope another strong provider comes on the market soon to give them some competition.
- brotchie 2y ago
  Yeah, the whole "order an Uber/Lyft, but they don't move for 5 minutes" phenomenon. Had this happen for a trip from MTV to SF, I guess they sit at home and wait for a ride? Uber and Lyft MUST be hurting in SF. Personally have switched to Waymo, most people I know have switched to Waymo. Find that it's induced a lot of personal demand. I'd rather wait a little longer and have a safe, comfortable ride, than drive in SF myself, circle around trying to find parking, and then be worried about my window being smashed, etc.
  - Gustomaximus 2y ago
    I assumed they could accept the next ride while close to dropping someone off, but the app limits their location while they drive the last bit to another customers house for privacy.
- adventured 2y ago
  Those reasons are similar to why Americans aggressively dislike public transportation. A single digit percentage of experiences are horrible (or worse). Trapped in a small space with sometimes psychotic, violent, smelly, modestly insane people. Somehow the proponents of public transport haven't figured out that's undesirable. It's not at all remotely worth the risks, unless you have no other good options.
gandalfstoe 2y ago
My prediction (dating back to 2015 when I was working at Uber) is that the cost per trip will never make sense for this to be a viable business model in the way Waymo presents itself as a product. I would really be curious to know how much Google has spent on this project over the last 15-20 years. There are many cheap Honda Civics and many unskilled people to drive them vs the custom real time hardware and software solutions required to power a Waymo trip.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > cost per trip will never make sense for this to be a viable business model in the way Waymo presents itself as a product How do you figure? In any case, Waymo is presently positioned as a premium product. That looks likely to remain true for at least half a decade.
- bigyikes 2y ago
  Once self driving is solved, the custom hardware and software is largely a fixed cost which can pay for itself over long time horizons. Meat-based drivers must be continually paid and don’t get any cheaper over time.
- titanomachy 2y ago
  They might be able to charge a premium for the unmanned experience. It’s at least more consistent, if not outright better, than a human-driven ride. In my city Uber costs nearly $100 per hour and the drivers are hit or miss; most are fine, but I’ve had a few near-collisions and wrong turns. Plus they cancel on me if I want to go somewhere they don’t like.
- andrewmcwatters 2y ago
  Back in 2015, the cost of lidar and compute was a bit higher. I'm curious what your estimates were. Their current hardware array is really expensive to replicate, and I have no idea how much cost savings they generate internally by buying their own inventory and building in-house.
- KoolKat23 2y ago
  Their investment is a sunk cost, at this point all looking at that number does is make it less attractive for others to enter the market and compete with them. Those custom hardware costs and software maintenance costs should continue to reduce gradually as it is being commoditized. The profit Uber make and the salary the drivers draw should eventually become the margin buffer/profit Google is able to extract.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
With these interest rates? Bold move, especially from Google. I hope that it pans out.
- RivieraKid 2y ago
  If they solve the economics, it becomes a money-printing business. Spend $1 for expansion and earn $1.5.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
    I like it. They must strongly believe that it'll pay off.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
eiururueuyeyd7 2y ago
[flagged]
nojvek 2y ago
Great. Autonomy is where R&D dollars ought to be flowing.
rajnathani 2y ago
This seems like a self-funded round instead of their 2020 (pre-COVID start) round where they, interestingly, raked in a lot of outside investors: https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/02/waymo-brings-in-2-25-billion-from-outside-investors-alphabet/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/02/waymo-brings-in-2-25-billi...

75 points by chrixf 2y ago

lysace 2y ago

That's like 10-15k SV yearly engineer salaries? Granted, it's "over the next few years".

mansoor_ 2y ago

When you have a tax bill like Alphabet's, these investments/write-offs seem less foolish.

bigyikes 2y ago
Are they foolish otherwise? They’re making 50,000+ rides per week already, with a very limited rollout. They only have to match the cost and convenience of Uber in order to utterly dominate the market. Once they fully solve self driving, which they inch ever closer towards doing, they can focus on cost reductions. Given that they don’t have to pay drivers, the potential profit margin is incredible. They will be fully uncontested soon. The only possible competition is Tesla, which has very impressive models, but is still far away from deploying actual robotaxis. I wish I could invest.
- mansoor_ 2y ago
  The total investment is now approx $10B, with a revenue of $ 50 million (projection). Not great. Yeah, they don't pay drivers, but their cars' hardware costs mean that they won't break even with human-driven taxis for quite some time (unless they manage to decentralise the computing). To put some rough numbers to this, the sensor set in each car, is probably ~$75K (was initially $150K).
linearrust 2y ago
Imagine thinking alphabet views waymo as a tax write off.
- obnauticus 2y ago
  It does. You can tax loss harvest from companies that you own, so it makes sense to have a bunch of bets that are money pits.
- mansoor_ 2y ago
  Imagine thinking a 0.5% return on investment is a good use of money when treasury bonds return almost 5%.
  - linearrust 2y ago
    > Imagine thinking a 0.5% return on investment is a good use of money What is waymo's valuation? How much has alphabet invested in waymo? $10 billion? What could they sell it off for today? $30 billion? More? What would the ROI be? > when treasury bonds return almost 5% And yet alphabet invests in waymo? I wonder why? Oh that's right. Alphabet created waymo as tax write off scheme. Absolute genius. It's insane how ingnorant hn commentors are when it comes to finance, investment and technology. Every earnings and every financial news, it's the most ignorant who rant about nonsense confidently. But then again, according to the geniuses of hn, tesla, meta, bitcoin, etc would have imploded years ago.
    - mansoor_ 2y ago
      If it were publicly traded, it would have a P/E of 600. I'll help you out since you don't read, a normal P/E is 20-30. To say it is not a great financial investment is unequivocal. It is effectively a write-off for the foreseeable future. But that is not to say you shouldn't invest in difficult problems and try to solve them, even if they don't make money. This is one of them. I hope people do the same for other challenging problems.
      - KoolKat23 2y ago
        P/E is a good measure for value stocks, where you're looking for consistent returns. Waymo still has to scale, the number means nothing. Tesla for example had a P/E ratio of 1000 two years ago. Okay it's still potentially overvalued and the share price has declined but their P/E ratio has dropped dramatically.

ra7 2y ago

Waymo has had a stellar year. 50,000+ rides per week across 3 major cities is nothing to scoff at, their users give overwhelmingly positive reviews. They are now testing their new purpose built robotaxis [1], which are supposed to be cheaper and get them to scale. They also don't seem to have any real competition right now. Cruise kind of self destructed and it came out today that GM is scrapping plans to build their 'Origin' robotaxis [2]. Tesla pushed out its robotaxi reveal and going by their track record, it won't exist for a long time (they are also nowhere close to doing fully autonomous rides [3], so there's that). Fully deserved, IMO. It's interesting how this funding round doesn't include external investors, but the previous two did. What's the calculation by Alphabet here? [1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/the-waymo-zeekr-robotaxi-has-come-to-san-francisco/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/the-waymo-zeekr-robotaxi-h... [2] https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/gms-cruise-abandons-origin-robotaxi-takes-583-million-charge/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/gms-cruise-abandons-origin... [3] https://www.teslafsdtracker.com https://www.teslafsdtracker.com

pchristensen 2y ago
If you think it's de-risked and ready to take off, why share the upside?
- tourist2d 2y ago
  [dead]
ugh123 2y ago
>Fully deserved, IMO. It's interesting how this funding round doesn't include external investors, but the previous two did. What's the calculation by Alphabet here? Prediction: Google/Waymo will buy the smallest, yet capable, manufacturer of vehicles (electric or not), and vertically integrate.
- pixelatedindex 2y ago
  Is this how Mitsubishi is going to reclaim their past glory? As a child I remember they had some iconic vehicles.

obnauticus 2y ago

I think the title is missing a word: “Alphabet _has to_ invest another $5B into Waymo”. I’d like to remind everyone that it’s still a taxi business with taxi margins (best case).

Panzer04 2y ago
If you aren't paying drivers, that's a lot of margin, yeah? If you're the only driverless game in town all of your vehicles can potentially earn an the salary of a driver, like 20$ an hour. They'd pay for themselves within a year pretty easily.
- obnauticus 2y ago
  There are a ton of operational costs that Uber/Lyft have lobbied to give to cheap contractors with no benefits.
  - mlyle 2y ago
    Sure, Uber/Lyft have thus far been successful in claiming a really big share of the margin. But there's still not too much margin when the driver needs some comp. Waymo, on the flip side, has a lot of capital equipment added to cars to depreciate, but it's gotten way cheaper and stands to get much cheaper still.
    - spyspy 2y ago
      The cars may also last way longer when they’re driving around at 30mph and follow all the traffic laws to the letter. Humans are very hard on cars.
    - obnauticus 2y ago
      Can it? You still need a ton of very expensive infra, engineering, ops to manage all of this. Waymo has clearly been playing the “but it’ll be cheaper” game for a long, long time now. It makes sense if you squint really hard and fudge some numbers about unit economics. If the expected outcome is for it to be eventually cheaper, then why when I open the app does it costs almost twice as much as an Uber or Lyft? You’d think they would want to at least convince investors and train customers that the savings are real and they’re going to prove it by passing it on.

tizzy 2y ago

Slightly off-topic and maybe against the typical viewpoint of the site, but if they spent this much money on bike lanes, e-bikes and public transport, self driving cars (and all cars) would get much better.

jeffbee 2y ago
"They" spend a totally insane amount on roads. This year's Caltrans budget is $25 billion. They are planning to waste it all on widening roads that don't need it.
- fire_lake 2y ago
  “We can’t have trains because it unfair to subsidize… oh wait!!”
kieranmaine 2y ago
One obstacle to increasing the amount of bikes lanes isn't money, but opposition to reducing the amount of curbside space for parking. My hope is AVs will reduce car ownership, which in turn reduces the amount of curbside space for required cars (Hopefully AVs can be parked at a few centralised parking lots). In turn this will allow for more bike lanes and bus lanes leading to improved active transport and public transport options.
SllX 2y ago
“They” is a private profit-seeking corporation. Local governments claim monopolies on roads and public transport in the places Waymo operates. Existing public transportation infrastructure is also being heavily underused as both MUNI and BART in the Bay Area are facing financial shortfalls from a lack of ridership, and of the ridership they do have, there is a lot more fare evasion than there used to be. There isn’t a single day that goes by when I’m passing through a station in San Francisco anymore that I don’t see someone (and usually multiple someones) hopping the gates into BART and several times a week I’ll see one of the fare gates to MUNI has been forced open and is out of service. MUNI and BART could probably stave off some of the losses if they just put actual police there to ticket and/or arrest fare evaders, at least when it’s busiest.

andrewmcwatters 2y ago

I'm so happy with Waymo, the current Waymo passenger experience is unparalleled. It's the future, for sure. It's true that there's no real competitor right now. I've been watching Cruise fleet vehicles drive around in Phoenix, so maybe eventually they'll gain some ground again. Waymo uses their own in-house lidar units as far as I know, but otherwise, it's a good time to be Ouster. VLP-16's cost about $5,000/unit right now.

andrewmcwatters 2y ago

The Waymo-Zeekr feels like what Apple wanted to accomplish with their car.

23B1 2y ago

google really, REALLY wants us to return to work

jbverschoor 2y ago

I heard they have $23B sitting there doing nothing

bagels 2y ago

Can this business make money? How much has been invested so far?

nserrino 2y ago

I've mostly switched over to Waymo, but had to take Ubers twice in the last month: * The first one, the driver made multiple racist remarks about different groups he observed as we drove. * The second one, the driver talked at length about UFOs and how they are real, for the entire 50 minute drive. Most drivers are totally normal and don't do things like that, but the tail end of negative experiences can be quite bad. Dirty cars, loud radios, body odor, and unsafe driving are all relatively common with human drivers. A Lyft driver I was riding with a few years back almost ran over a man in a wheelchair who had the right of way. Wait times are also more reliable so far with Waymo. It's not uncommon for an Uber/Lyft driver to accept a ride but then not drive toward you for 5+ minutes. Waymo has the advantage of predictability - both in terms of arrival time and overall travel time (whereas there is variance among human drivers). Sometimes I've had Waymos get stuck, but it usually resolves within 10-15 seconds. Given how smooth, predictable, and safe Waymos are, I don't see a strong reason to risk a negative experience with a human driver (beyond ideological reasons). However, I hope another strong provider comes on the market soon to give them some competition.

brotchie 2y ago
Yeah, the whole "order an Uber/Lyft, but they don't move for 5 minutes" phenomenon. Had this happen for a trip from MTV to SF, I guess they sit at home and wait for a ride? Uber and Lyft MUST be hurting in SF. Personally have switched to Waymo, most people I know have switched to Waymo. Find that it's induced a lot of personal demand. I'd rather wait a little longer and have a safe, comfortable ride, than drive in SF myself, circle around trying to find parking, and then be worried about my window being smashed, etc.
- Gustomaximus 2y ago
  I assumed they could accept the next ride while close to dropping someone off, but the app limits their location while they drive the last bit to another customers house for privacy.
adventured 2y ago
Those reasons are similar to why Americans aggressively dislike public transportation. A single digit percentage of experiences are horrible (or worse). Trapped in a small space with sometimes psychotic, violent, smelly, modestly insane people. Somehow the proponents of public transport haven't figured out that's undesirable. It's not at all remotely worth the risks, unless you have no other good options.

gandalfstoe 2y ago

My prediction (dating back to 2015 when I was working at Uber) is that the cost per trip will never make sense for this to be a viable business model in the way Waymo presents itself as a product. I would really be curious to know how much Google has spent on this project over the last 15-20 years. There are many cheap Honda Civics and many unskilled people to drive them vs the custom real time hardware and software solutions required to power a Waymo trip.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> cost per trip will never make sense for this to be a viable business model in the way Waymo presents itself as a product How do you figure? In any case, Waymo is presently positioned as a premium product. That looks likely to remain true for at least half a decade.
bigyikes 2y ago
Once self driving is solved, the custom hardware and software is largely a fixed cost which can pay for itself over long time horizons. Meat-based drivers must be continually paid and don’t get any cheaper over time.
titanomachy 2y ago
They might be able to charge a premium for the unmanned experience. It’s at least more consistent, if not outright better, than a human-driven ride. In my city Uber costs nearly $100 per hour and the drivers are hit or miss; most are fine, but I’ve had a few near-collisions and wrong turns. Plus they cancel on me if I want to go somewhere they don’t like.
andrewmcwatters 2y ago
Back in 2015, the cost of lidar and compute was a bit higher. I'm curious what your estimates were. Their current hardware array is really expensive to replicate, and I have no idea how much cost savings they generate internally by buying their own inventory and building in-house.
KoolKat23 2y ago
Their investment is a sunk cost, at this point all looking at that number does is make it less attractive for others to enter the market and compete with them. Those custom hardware costs and software maintenance costs should continue to reduce gradually as it is being commoditized. The profit Uber make and the salary the drivers draw should eventually become the margin buffer/profit Google is able to extract.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

With these interest rates? Bold move, especially from Google. I hope that it pans out.

RivieraKid 2y ago
If they solve the economics, it becomes a money-printing business. Spend $1 for expansion and earn $1.5.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  I like it. They must strongly believe that it'll pay off.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

eiururueuyeyd7 2y ago

[flagged]

nojvek 2y ago

Great. Autonomy is where R&D dollars ought to be flowing.

rajnathani 2y ago

This seems like a self-funded round instead of their 2020 (pre-COVID start) round where they, interestingly, raked in a lot of outside investors: https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/02/waymo-brings-in-2-25-billion-from-outside-investors-alphabet/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/02/waymo-brings-in-2-25-billi...