Announced on 2 February 2026, the funding is intended to support large-scale deployment in the United States and internationally
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Waymo raises $16 billion to deploy its autonomous taxis
Waymo, an Alphabet subsidiary, has closed a $16 billion funding round, valuing the company at $126 billion. Announced on 2 February 2026, the funding is intended to support large-scale deployment in the United States and internationally.
The company has officially announced the funding round, which brings its valuation to $126 billion. The transaction was led by Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global and Sequoia Capital, with support from Alphabet (Google's parent company), which remains the majority shareholder. In 2024, Waymo raised $5.6 billion, achieving a valuation of around $45 billion. The company is thus expanding to finance the industrialisation of its autonomous taxi services.
2026 is a pivotal year for autonomous taxis. This capital is intended to support the rapid expansion of operations. Waymo plans to expand to more than 20 additional cities by 2026, including London and Tokyo. Its autonomous taxi service currently operates in six major US metropolitan areas: the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta and Miami. It now boasts more than 450,000 weekly rides and over 20 million total trips, having tripled its volume since 2025.
“This milestone is built on a foundation of safety that is now statistically superior to human driving” explain Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov, Waymo Co-CEOs in a blogpost. “We are no longer proving a concept; we are scaling a commercial reality.”
In addition to the opening of its Miami facility to the public on 22 January 2026, Waymo plans to expand to a dozen new US cities in 2026. These include Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego and Washington, D.C. The company is leveraging partnerships to accelerate this expansion, such as the agreement with Uber in Austin and Atlanta. Subject to local permits, these deployments could make 2026 a pivotal year for international expansion, with initial forays into the UK and Japan.
