A Waymo vehicle leaves a charging station in Austin, Texas, on January 15, 2026.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
alphabetWaymo’s self-driving car division announced Monday that it has raised a $16 billion funding round, valuing the company at $126 billion “post-money.”
This new funding is the latest move by Alphabet to fund Waymo’s continued expansion into more markets.
The new valuation is more than double the valuation Waymo received after its last funding round in October 2024. This was a $5.6 billion Series C round and a valuation of $45 billion. At the time, Alphabet pledged a $5 billion, multi-year investment in Waymo.
“This milestone is built on a foundation of safety that is statistically better than human driving,” Waymo co-chief executives Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov said in a blog post. “We are no longer proving a concept, but scaling a commercial reality.”
The latest funding round was led by Alphabet with previous backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, Perry Creek, Silver Lake, Tiger Global, and T. Rowe Price. The new round includes additional investors including Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Alphabet-owned investment firm GV.
Alphabet itself is a “majority investor,” according to the blog.
Waymo said the new funding will allow the company to “operate at unprecedented speed while maintaining industry-leading safety standards.” “We are now focused on a global scale, bringing the safety and magic of Waymo Driver to even more cities across the U.S. and around the world this year.”
CNBC previously reported that Google’s sister company plans to raise at least $15 billion at a $110 billion valuation.
Waymo’s robotaxi service currently operates in the Austin, San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Miami markets and launched in January. Waymo said in a blog post Monday that the company will have serviced 15 million trips in 2025.
Waymo plans to launch in 2026 in Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego, and Washington. The company also plans to expand to London, its first international market.
With rapid expansion, the company is starting to face challenges.
Waymo announced a software recall for its vehicles in December after Texas authorities said robotaxis had illegally passed school buses at least 19 times since the start of the school year, and last month a Waymo hit a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica, California. The incident is under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
WATCH: 2025: The year robotaxis go mainstream, with Waymo leading the way.
