Autonomous Driving Company Waymo Raises $2.25bn in March 2020

Waymo announced its first external investment round in March 2020, raising $2.25bn led by Silver Lake, Canada Pension Investment Board and Mubadala Investment Company. This investment round follows a recent series of major operational and technical milestones; Waymo Driver has driven more than 20 million miles (32 million km) on public roads across over 25 cities, and over 10 billion miles (16 billion km) in simulation. Engineers and technicians at Waymo's Detroit factory, the world’s first factory dedicated to the mass production of L4 fully autonomous vehicles, have shipped the first vehicles integrated with 5th generation hardware that allows it to peek around blind spots. However, it is noteworthy that Morgan Stanley has slashed its initial estimation of how much Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo driverless car business is worth, saying the technology is taking longer to develop than previously expected, down from the $175 billion valuation a year ago. Morgan Stanley’s Brian Nowak commented that “there have been a series of hurdles relating to the commercialization and advancement of autonomous driving technology”, notably underestimating “how long safety drivers are likely to be present within cars and the timing of the rollout of autonomous ridesharing services.”