- General
- March 12, 2019
- 6 minutes read
Waymo Reportedly Seeking Outside Investment
Alphabet chief financial officer (CFO) Ruth Porat Photograph by Stuart Isett for Fortune Most Powerful Women According to a report…
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| Alphabet chief financial officer (CFO) Ruth Porat
Photograph by Stuart Isett for Fortune Most Powerful Women
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According to a report from The Information, Waymo – Alphabet’s self-driving division – is seeking financing from outside investors, citing a person with ‘direct knowledge’ of the situation. The report says the self-driving division has been seeking outside funding from investors such as European automakers like Volkswagen, suggesting efforts to limit how much cash it puts into the unit and show how valuable other firms believe it to be.
Waymo is said to be costing Alphabet at least $1 billion annually. Although Alphabet with more than $100 billion in cash can well afford that, CFO Ruth Porat is pushing the company’s various units to cut costs and operate more efficiently, The Information says. Several estimates have placed Waymo’s valuation from between $25 billion to as high as $175 billion.
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| Waymo CEO John Krafcik
Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Web Summit via Sportsfile
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The self-driving company recently announced that’ll it begin selling LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) sensors to customers who won’t compete with its robot taxi service to lower the cost of manufacturing its self-driving cars. Aside from Volkswagen, other potential Wamo investors could include automakers like Fiat Chrysler and Jaguar, that makes cars for Waymo, The Information said.
Also in the self-driving industry, Drive.ai is said to be seeking a buyer, another self-driving startup – TuSimple – hit a $1 billion valuation last month after a $95 million Series D round, Nuro recently closed $940 million funding from Softbank Vision Fund. Volkswagen is also said to be considering an investment in Ford’s self-driving unit.
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