Waymo drives home $2.25B in its first external fundraise

Waymo cash, way less drivers... Waymo is the self-driving car project that evolved out of Google's "moonshot factory." It just drove home a whopping $2.25B in investment cash. For the first time, it wasn't all internal funding — this was an external fundraise.

• Waymo was born in Google's X lab, and later graduated into a subsidiary company of Google's parent, Alphabet. It's Google's most successful moonshot, valued at an estimated $105B last fall (probably more now).
• "The World's Most Experienced Driver" — what Waymo calls its robotic self-driving tech (it literally trademarked the phrase). And it's driven a lot of miles (a whopping 20M) to test the concept.

Waymo opportunities to expand... Waymo makes the software and sensors that make driverless cruising possible — it can then sell this tech to other companies as a service — we're calling it SDaaS ("self-driving as a service"). And its tech (and ambitions) aren't just limited to consumer vehicles:

• Robotaxis: Waymo launched a ride-hailing service/app called Waymo One (tested in Phoenix).
• Delivery/Trucking: In January, Waymo said it would begin testing autonomous long-haul trucks in Texas and New Mexico.
• Sensors: It has plans to sell its custom LiDAR sensors outside of vehicle-related industries — think robotics, security, and agricultural tech.