Waymo funding: Every round, investor, and valuation (2026)

Waymo builds self-driving technology and sells rides in cars that have no one behind the wheel. Its Waymo One service runs robotaxis in 15 US metro areas, and riders pay per trip through the Waymo app or, in Austin and Atlanta, through Uber.

Waymo has raised $32.3 billion across five rounds since 2020: four equity rounds worth $27.3 billion and a $5 billion term loan in October 2026. Its latest equity round, a $16 billion raise in February 2026, valued the company at $126 billion.

The cap table is unusual for a company this size. Waymo is still a majority-owned subsidiary of Alphabet, and Alphabet supplied most of the money in three of the four equity rounds. Let's dive into Waymo's funding history.

Waymo spent its first decade funded entirely by Google, then took outside money for the first time in 2020. The rounds have grown with each step toward a commercial robotaxi business, and the 2026 round alone was larger than the three before it combined.

Waymo began in 2009 as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, code-named Chauffeur, inside Google's X research lab. Google paid for all of it and never reported what it cost. The only public figure came from the Waymo v. Uber trade secrets case, where a deposition put spending from 2009 through 2015 at about $1.1 billion.

In December 2016 the project became Waymo, a standalone company under Alphabet. No outside money came with the spin-out. Waymo opened its first commercial robotaxi service in the Phoenix area in December 2018, still funded only by its parent.

Waymo announced its first external round in March 2020, a $2.25 billion first close led by Silver Lake, CPP Investments, and Mubadala, Abu Dhabi's sovereign investor. Magna, Andreessen Horowitz, AutoNation, and Alphabet joined. Fund managers T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, and Perry Creek came in through an extension, and Alphabet's filings put the final total at $3.2 billion.

This was the one round outside investors paid for. Alphabet described it as externally led, and its 2020 cash flow statement shows $2.8 billion raised from selling stakes in its subsidiaries, which it attributed mainly to Waymo's new investors.

The second round, $2.5 billion in June 2021, went the other way. Alphabet's quarterly filing said the majority of it came from Alphabet, and its cash flow statement suggests outside investors put in only about $300 million that year. Temasek and Tiger Global joined as new names, and Waymo named no lead.

Waymo raised nothing for three years after that while it rebuilt its fleet and expanded beyond Phoenix. In July 2024, Alphabet's Ruth Porat told investors on its earnings call that Alphabet would commit up to $5 billion more to Waymo over several years.

That commitment became most of the $5.6 billion Series C, announced in October 2024 and led by Alphabet. Waymo called the round oversubscribed, and six earlier backers returned, but Alphabet's 2024 filings suggest outside investors supplied only about $1.2 billion. Waymo was giving more than 100,000 paid rides a week at the time.

The February 2026 round was the first one led by outside firms since 2020. Dragoneer, DST Global, and Sequoia led it, all three new to Waymo, with significant checks from Andreessen Horowitz and Mubadala Capital. The Financial Times reported the round was about three times oversubscribed.

Alphabet still wrote most of the $16 billion. Waymo said Alphabet remains its majority investor, Alphabet's filings describe the round as a "significant majority" funded by Alphabet, and Bloomberg reported Alphabet's share at about $13 billion. That left roughly $3 billion for the 13 outside firms, an amount equal to under 1% of the $425 billion in global venture funding invested in 2025.

In October 2026 Waymo closed its first debt financing, a $5 billion term loan arranged by Goldman Sachs. PIMCO, Blackstone, and Sixth Street led the lenders. Bloomberg reported the deal was upsized from an initial target of about $3 billion, and Waymo said the money would fund US and international expansion.

Waymo's valuation fell before it rose. Wall Street analysts once priced it far above anything investors later paid, and it took until 2026 for a funding round to clear those early estimates.

Morgan Stanley's 2018 figure was a forecast of what Waymo could be worth if robotaxis took off, not a price anyone paid. The bank cut it by 40% a year later, citing slower progress in removing safety drivers. When the first investors arrived in 2020, the Financial Times reported they paid about $30 billion, less than a third of even the reduced estimate.

The valuation then sat still. Analysts put the 2021 round at roughly the same $30 billion, and Waymo did not disclose a price for either round. The Series C lifted the reported valuation to more than $45 billion, about 1.5 times the 2021 level.

The 2026 round was the first time Waymo published a valuation. At $110 billion before the new money, the company was worth about 2.4 times its 2024 post-money price, and the $126 billion post-money figure is 2.8 times higher. A business valuation calculator shows how much of that price rests on future rides rather than current revenue.

The price per share matters less to Alphabet than control. Alphabet has never disclosed its exact stake, and the breakdown of how Waymo's ownership is split shows why outside investors are estimated to hold only a minority after six years of rounds.

Waymo's backers fall into five groups: Alphabet, the funds that led the 2020 and 2026 rounds, two auto industry partners, the fund managers that have joined nearly every round, and the lenders behind its 2026 loan. Waymo has not disclosed any outside investor's stake.

Alphabet is the majority owner and the largest funder by a wide margin. Based on its filings, outside investors put in an estimated $7 billion to $8 billion of the $27.3 billion in equity, and Alphabet the rest. Alphabet consolidates Waymo in its accounts and books the outside stakes as noncontrolling interests.

That patience reflects Alphabet's founder-controlled ownership. Larry Page and Sergey Brin hold most of the voting power, which lets Alphabet keep funding a business that has yet to report a profit after more than 15 years.

Alphabet's two investment arms, CapitalG and GV, also joined the 2026 round. CapitalG backs other physical AI bets too, including Physical Intelligence's funding rounds.

The three 2020 leads gave Waymo its first outside price. Silver Lake returned in 2021, 2024, and 2026, and its co-CEO Egon Durban was named as a nominee to Waymo's operating board in 2020, the only outside board seat Waymo has disclosed.

CPP Investments, Canada's national pension fund, invested in 2020 and 2021. It is now also a partner in Waymo's planned Toronto service, announced in October 2026. Mubadala co-led the first round and returned with a significant check in 2026.

Two investors are also suppliers. Magna, the Canadian auto parts maker, invested in 2020 and 2021 and runs Waymo's vehicle integration plant in Mesa, Arizona, which opened in May 2025 and installs Waymo's sensors and computers on new cars.

AutoNation, the largest US car dealer group, has maintained and repaired Waymo's fleet since 2017. It invested in 2020 and 2021. Both companies get a supply contract that grows with every car Waymo adds.

T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, and Perry Creek joined through the 2020 extension and have backed every round since. T. Rowe Price and Fidelity also lent money in the October 2026 loan. Andreessen Horowitz and Silver Lake have invested in all four equity rounds.

Tiger Global joined in 2021, and Temasek, Singapore's state investor, invested in 2021 and 2026. Mutual fund managers such as T. Rowe Price and Fidelity often appear in a company's last private rounds before an IPO, though Waymo has not filed for one.

The 2026 leads are growth investors with a record in large AI deals. DST Global co-led Databricks' $10 billion Series J, and Dragoneer joined OpenAI's $41 billion round in 2025. Sequoia, Bessemer, Kleiner Perkins, and BDT & MSD Partners also invested for the first time.

None of the new investors has disclosed a board seat. Their money bought a small minority stake, priced for the first time in public, in a company Alphabet still controls.

The October 2026 loan brought in a separate group. PIMCO, Blackstone, and Sixth Street led it, Capital Group, Loomis Sayles, and T. Rowe Price took significant pieces, and Apollo, Blue Owl, Diameter, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, HPS, and Oaktree joined. Waymo did not disclose the interest rate, maturity, or collateral.

Waymo spends its funding on cars, the software that drives them, the cities it enters, and the people who build it. The cost shows up in Alphabet's Other Bets segment, where Waymo sits alongside smaller units such as Verily and Wing.

Other Bets lost $7.5 billion in 2025, and $3.9 billion more in the first half of 2026. Alphabet does not break out Waymo's share, but the money is funded largely by Google's search advertising profits. Waymo's own revenue is small next to that: the Financial Times reported an annual run rate above $350 million in January 2026.

The fleet is the largest physical cost. Waymo had more than 4,000 robotaxis by September 2026, up from about 3,000 at the end of 2025. Most are Jaguar I-Pace SUVs, and Waymo now fits new vehicles at the Mesa plant, which it says can handle tens of thousands of vehicles a year at full capacity.

Two new vehicles are meant to bring that cost down. The Ojai, a minivan built by Zeekr, began carrying public riders in May 2026, and Waymo says it costs significantly less to build than the Jaguar. Hyundai expects to start delivering Ioniq 5s for Waymo's service in the fourth quarter of 2026 from its Georgia plant.

The second cost is the self-driving system itself. The sixth-generation Waymo Driver, which runs the Ojai and the Ioniq 5, uses fewer than half the cameras of the previous version, cheaper lidar and radar, and custom chips. It is also built to handle snow, which Waymo needs for cities such as Denver and Toronto.

Waymo also uses Alphabet's AI research. Its EMMA research model, published in 2024, is built on Google's Gemini. Waymo has not disclosed what it spends on computing.

Each new city needs depots, charging, mapping, and fleet partners. Waymo launched in Denver, San Diego, Tampa, and Las Vegas in September 2026 alone, and it plans Tokyo and Munich in 2027 and Toronto in 2028.

People are a large cost too. Alphabet recorded a $2.1 billion Waymo employee compensation charge in the fourth quarter of 2025, tied to the higher value of Waymo's stock. Every new round at a higher price raises the value of the shares Waymo uses to pay its engineers.

Waymo's growth focus is volume. It gave more than 500,000 paid rides a week in March 2026, up from 250,000 a year earlier, and it is aiming for 1 million a week by the end of 2026. It is also taking more of the customer relationship: its partnership with Uber in Phoenix ended in June 2026, and Waymo plans its own app in Austin and Atlanta in 2028, a test of Uber's asset-light business model against an operator that owns the cars.

The product plan centers on cheaper vehicles, freeways, airports, and new countries. The Ojai and the Ioniq 5 are the cars the 2026 round and the loan are paying for, and London, Tokyo, Munich, Singapore, and Toronto are the first markets outside the US. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in July 2026 that Alphabet is focused on scaling Waymo within its current structure, and there is no IPO filing.

The risks are safety, regulation, and competition. NHTSA opened a probe into Waymo cars passing stopped school buses in 2025, Waymo issued recalls in April and June 2026, and it paused freeway rides for about two months before resuming them in July. Tesla, Amazon's Zoox, and Baidu's Apollo Go are all scaling robotaxis, and Waymo's first loan means part of its growth now has to pay interest as well as justify a $126 billion valuation.

Waymo has raised $32.3 billion since 2020. That includes $27.3 billion across four equity rounds, from a $3.2 billion first round in 2020 to a $16 billion round in February 2026, and a $5 billion term loan in October 2026. Google also funded the project internally from 2009 to 2016.

Alphabet is Waymo's majority investor and has supplied most of its equity funding. Outside investors include Dragoneer, DST Global, Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Silver Lake, Mubadala, CPP Investments, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Perry Creek, Tiger Global, Temasek, Magna, and AutoNation. PIMCO, Blackstone, and Sixth Street led its 2026 loan.

Waymo was valued at $126 billion after its $16 billion round in February 2026, or $110 billion before the new money. That is up from a reported valuation of more than $45 billion in October 2024 and about $30 billion in 2020 and 2021.

No. Waymo is a private, majority-owned subsidiary of Alphabet, and its shares do not trade on any exchange, though buying Alphabet stock gives indirect exposure. Waymo has not filed for an IPO, and Alphabet has said it is focused on scaling Waymo within its current structure.

Alphabet, Google's parent company, owns most of Waymo. It has never disclosed its exact stake. The rest is held by outside investors, including Dragoneer, DST Global, Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Silver Lake, and Mubadala, and by Waymo employees through stock compensation.