Alphabet's Self-driving Car Company Waymo Raises $2.5 Bln In New Funding Round

(RTTNews) - Waymo, the autonomous driving technology development company owned by Google's parent Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), Wednesday announced a $2.5 billion investment round. The company said it will use the funds for advancing its autonomous driving technology and growing its team.

The fresh round of funding saw participation from Alphabet, Andreessen Horowitz, AutoNation, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Magna International, Mubadala Investment Company, Perry Creek Capital, Silver Lake, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Temasek, and Tiger Global.

The news comes just few months after former CEO John Krafcik announced in April that he was stepping down after five years at the helm of the company. The company is being run by Tekedra Mawakana, former COO, and Dmitri Dolgov, who joined the original self-driving project at Google and was CTO.

Earlier, Alphabet used to financially support Waymo, however, the company has been receiving criticism for its slow growth. Last March, Waymo announced that it raised $2.25 billion in its first external funding round. By July 2020, the company said it raised a total of $3.2 billion after an extension of that round.

Earlier this month, Waymo announced that it was entering a "test run" with J.B. Hunt for transportation services between Houston and Fort Worth. For the pilot operation, the companies have chosen Interstate 45 in Texas where Waymo's class 8 autonomous will carry the freight from Houston to Fort Worth.

The company has already deployed its autonomous vehicles in Phoenix as a ride-hailing service.