Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company majority owned by Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), has seen its valuation climb to $45 billion in its latest funding round, following a year where it ramped up passenger rides.
Two weeks ago, the startup revealed it had completed a $5.6 billion Series C funding round, led by its parent company, with the valuation reported today by Bloomberg.
Waymo said it had raised funds in an "oversubscribed investment round" from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, Perry Creek, Silver Lake, Tiger Global and T Rowe Price.
After being spun off by Google in 2009, Waymo started offering driverless rides to paying passengers in San Francisco last year and this year has expanded into Los Angeles, San Francisco and the surrounding peninsula. Via a partnership with Uber, it also operates in Phoenix.
In August this year, it completed over 312,000 passenger rides, up from 12,000 rides a year earlier.
Waymo said it will use the new cash to expand into other new cities and "continue advancing the Waymo Driver — our AI-powered autonomous driving system — to support a variety of business applications over time", it said in the blog post.
Expansion cities will include Austin and Atlanta.