Waymo has closed a $5.6 billion funding spherical to develop its robotaxi service in and past Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix, the place it operates at the moment.

The autonomous car enterprise is owned by Google father or mother Alphabet, which led the sequence C funding in Waymo, alongside earlier backers together with Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Constancy, Perry Creek, Silver Lake, Tiger International and T. Rowe Worth.

In a press release to CNBC, Waymo co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov stated the funding would go towards growth and advancing the Waymo Driver for enterprise purposes.

“With this newest funding, we’ll proceed to welcome extra riders into our Waymo One ride-hailing service in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, and in Austin and Atlanta by means of our expanded partnership with Uber,” they wrote.

The sequence C funding brings Waymo’s whole capital raised to $11.1 billion after it raised $3.2 billion and $2.5 billion in two earlier rounds. Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat introduced in July that the father or mother firm would decide to a multiyear funding of as much as $5 billion in Waymo.

Whereas many firms are testing autonomous autos, or AVs, on public roads within the U.S., together with well-funded upstarts akin to Wayve, Waymo is the one one to function a industrial robotaxi service in a number of main metro areas.

The service has been embraced by some ladies who’ve security considerations about driving with unknown human drivers. And it has even been utilized by dad and mom to ship their teenagers to highschool when different transit choices felt much less secure or handy.

Waymo now conducts greater than 100,000 weekly journeys for passengers in Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco, who can hail their robotaxis through the Waymo One app. Extra just lately, Waymo partnered with Uber to launch its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas — residence of would-be rival Tesla’s headquarters.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made guarantees about self-driving automobiles for greater than a decade. This week, he stated Tesla would supply a driverless ride-hailing service in Texas and California subsequent yr, as soon as the corporate upgrades the partially automated programs in its current autos, which nonetheless require a human driver at the moment.

GM-owned Cruise had been Waymo’s closest competitor within the U.S. till it paused operations following an October 2023 incident in San Francisco wherein a pedestrian was dragged 20 ft by a Cruise AV, after she was first struck by a human driver in one other automobile. Cruise is working to reinstate its service and likewise plans to companion with Uber.

Self-driving car makers within the U.S. should nonetheless show their expertise is safer to make use of than taxis and vehicles with human drivers. As CNBC beforehand reported, almost two-thirds of U.S. respondents to a Pew Analysis Middle survey stated they’d not need to experience in a driverless passenger car if they’d the chance.

Waymo’s self-reported knowledge means that their autos crash “far much less usually than human drivers on public roads,” in response to evaluation by Understanding AI creator Timothy B. Lee.

Nonetheless, Waymo has initiated software program recollects to enhance the protection of its self-driving programs, and its AVs have generally blocked visitors, traveled the incorrect manner down the road, or been concerned in collisions, although none resulted in a recognized fatality or extreme harm.

The following-generation robotaxi from Waymo is a Geely Zeekr that is outfitted with its customized sensors and AI “Driver.” Waymo additionally just lately agreed to a multiyear strategic partnership with Hyundai that can add the South Korean automaker’s Ioniq 5 electrical car to its robotaxi fleet.

In August, Waymo stated it might additionally take a look at its driverless autos in harsher, winter climate together with in northern California, upstate New York and Michigan, with the hope of providing robotaxi providers past the sunbelt, and finally internationally.