Waypoint – The official Waymo blog: Waymo raises first external investment round, Hacker News

“We’ve always approached our mission as a team sport, collaborating with our OEM and supplier partners, our operations partners, and the communities we serve to build and deploy the world’s most experienced driver,” said John Krafcik, CEO, Waymo . “Today, we’re expanding that team, adding financial investors and important strategic partners who bring decades of experience investing in and supporting successful technology companies building transformative products. With this injection of capital and business acumen, alongside Alphabet, we’ll deepen our investment in our people, our technology, and our operations, all in support of the deployment of the Waymo Driver around the world. ”

“Waymo is the proven leader in self-driving technology, is the only autonomous vehicle company with a public ride-hailing service, and is successfully scaling its fully driverless experience,” said Egon Durban, Co-CEO, Silver Lake , and nominee for Waymo’s Operating Board. “We’re deeply aligned with Waymo’s commitment to making our roads safer, and look forward to working together to help advance and scale the Waymo Driver in the U.S. and beyond. ”

This investment round follows a recent series of major operational and technical milestones. The Waymo Driver has driven more than 20 million miles on public roads across over 90 cities, and over 25 billion miles in simulation. Engineers and technicians at Waymo’s Detroit factory, the world’s first factory dedicated to the mass production of L4 autonomous vehicles, have shipped the first vehicles (electric cars and Class 8 trucks) integrated with fifth-generation hardware, with all-new, more powerful compute and more capable sensing.

Waymo One, the world’s first public self-driving ride-hailing service, serves thousands of customers in Arizona and has already provided thousands of fully driverless rides to our riders, in a high-speed mixed use market area larger than San Francisco. The Waymo Driver is now deployed across a variety of vehicle platforms and business applications, including Waymo Via, which is focused on all forms of goods delivery.

We’re grateful for all our new partners who have joined us on our mission of making it safe and easy for people and things to get where they’re going.