A Waymo vehicle exits a charging lot on Jan. 15, 2026 in Austin, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
Alphabet‘s self-driving car unit Waymo on Monday said it raised a $16 billion funding round that values the company at $126 billion “post-money.”
The new funding is the latest move by Alphabet to fund Waymo’s continued expansion to more markets.
The new valuation is more than double what Waymo notched after its last funding round in October 2024. That was a series C round of $5.6 billion at a $45 billion valuation. Alphabet committed $5 billion in a multiyear investment to Waymo at the time.
“This milestone is built on a foundation of safety that is now statistically superior to human driving,” Waymo co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov wrote in a blog post. “We are no longer proving a concept; we are scaling a commercial reality.”
The latest funding round was led by Alphabet alongside previous backers, including Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, Perry Creek, Silver Lake, Tiger Global and T. Rowe Price. The new round includes additional investors such as Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins and Alphabet-owned investment firm GV.
Alphabet itself is the “majority investor,” according to the blog.
The new capital will help the company move “with unprecedented velocity, while maintaining our industry-leading safety standards,” Waymo said. “Our focus is now on global scale, bringing the safety and magic of the Waymo Driver to even more cities this year across the United States and international.”
CNBC previously reported that the Google sister company was set to raise at least $15 billion at a valuation of $110 billion.
Waymo’s robotaxi service currently operates in the markets of Austin, the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Miami, where it began offering service in January.
In 2026, Waymo plans to open service in Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego and Washington. It also plans to expand to London, its first international market.
The company has begun facing challenges as it rapidly expands.
Waymo issued a software recall in December for its vehicles after Texas officials said the robotaxis illegally passed school buses at least 19 times since the start of the school year, and last month, Waymo struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica, California. The incident is under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
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