Waymo has increased its inaugural private debt raise to $5 billion as Alphabet’s autonomous-driving unit ramps up robotaxi operations in more U.S. cities.
Blackstone Inc, Sixth Street Partners and Pacific Investment Management Co. played a key role in the private debt offering, which was priced at 5.25 percentage points over the benchmark rate, according to Bloomberg.
Goldman Sachs worked on the deal, which is expected to officially close soon.
Earlier this year, Waymo raised $16 billion in a new funding round. Its valuation hovered at around $126 billion, underpinning growing investor confidence in commercial autonomous vehicle services.
The raise is one of the largest private investment rounds ever for an autonomous vehicle business, more than tripling Waymo’s valuation from roughly $45 billion in 2024.
Waymo’s autonomous ride-hailing service operates driverless "robotaxis" in six major U.S. metropolitan regions and provided about 15 million paid rides in 2025, nearly three times the previous year’s volume, the company said. It currently logs roughly 400,000 rides each week.
The self-driving car unit continues to expand its services across the U.S., with recent launches in cities such as Las Vegas and Detroit.
The company is also preparing for international expansion with plans to begin operating in Japan and Singapore over the next several years. Waymo has set a target of reaching 1 million paid rides per week by the end of this year.
Waymo, which began as a Google project in 2009 and became an independent Alphabet company in 2016, remains one of the most established U.S. providers of fully driverless paid robotaxi services and is widely regarded as a leader in autonomous driving technology.
Amazon-backed (NASDAQ:AMZN) Zoox has now joined the commercial robotaxi market, while Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) maintains a presence in Texas, Florida and the San Francisco Bay Area, where it operates with a required safety driver.
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