111 billion yuan! The biggest financing of the year for autonomous driving has arrived

On February 2nd, local time, Alphabet’s autonomous driving company Waymo announced on its official blog that it has completed a $16 billion (approximately RMB 111 billion) financing round, with a post-money valuation of $126 billion (approximately RMB 874 billion), making it one of the largest single financings in the autonomous driving field in recent years.

In addition to Alphabet continuing to support as the main investor, this round of financing was led by Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global, and Sequoia Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Mubadala Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Silver Lake Capital, Tiger Global, and T. Rowe Price.

Waymo disclosed in the blog that by 2025, the company’s annual order volume will have more than doubled year-over-year to 15 million trips, with a total of over 20 million trips to date. Its driverless taxi service currently provides over 400,000 trips per week.

Valuation doubles compared to the previous round

Waymo was founded in 2009, initially as an internal Google autonomous driving project, and spun off from Alphabet in December 2016 to become one of the earliest companies to deploy autonomous driving technology globally.

In October 2024, Waymo completed a $5.6 billion financing round, at that time valued at over $45 billion. Compared to that, the company’s valuation has doubled after this round of financing.

Currently, Waymo operates fully driverless ride-hailing services in several U.S. cities, with no human safety drivers onboard, covering the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and providing services through Uber platforms in Austin and Atlanta.

Earlier media reports indicated that Waymo expects to launch fully autonomous taxi services in London in Q4 2026, marking its first entry into the European market. Waymo later confirmed on its official blog that it plans to use this round of funding to expand its business from the current six metropolitan areas in the U.S. to over 20 cities including London and Tokyo.

At the same time, Waymo stated that this funding will help the company accelerate global expansion while maintaining industry-leading safety standards. “We are expanding our fleet and building a world-class team to meet the growing global demand for autonomous mobility.”

“Thousand-vehicle fleet” emerges

Robotaxi commercialization accelerates

Waymo’s massive financing is seen by industry insiders as a signal that the global autonomous driving race is heating up.

Currently, the autonomous driving industry is transitioning from testing and small-scale commercialization to rapid scaling.

In overseas markets, Tesla’s autonomous driving deployment has noticeably accelerated. During the recent Q4 earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet has exceeded 500 vehicles, and plans to launch driverless car services in dozens of major U.S. cities by the end of 2026.

Tesla has already launched unsupervised Robotaxi services in Austin, Texas. Additionally, Musk recently announced that Tesla’s supervised “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) system is accelerating international approval, with expected approval in China and Europe as early as February.

In China, the “two giants” of autonomous driving are deploying in multiple locations domestically and internationally, entering the “thousand-vehicle fleet” era.

According to data disclosed by WeRide, as of January 12, its total Robotaxi deployment worldwide reached 1,023 vehicles. Currently, WeRide’s Robotaxi has achieved fully autonomous commercial operations in Guangzhou, Beijing, and Abu Dhabi, with the Abu Dhabi fleet soon reaching break-even per vehicle; its autonomous minibus also officially began passenger service in Belgium at the end of January. WeRide aims to deploy tens of thousands of Robotaxis globally by 2030.

Xiaopeng Motors disclosed that its Robotaxi fleet will reach 1,159 vehicles by 2025, achieving full autonomous commercial operation in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, with the seventh-generation Robotaxi already profitable per vehicle in Guangzhou. Currently, Xiaopeng’s Robotaxi business has expanded to 8 countries including the U.S., Luxembourg, and Qatar. In its Q3 2025 financial report, the company stated that its Robotaxi scale target for 2026 is over 3,000 vehicles.

From a market perspective, according to forecasts by Frost & Sullivan, by 2030, the number of Robotaxis in first- and second-tier Chinese cities is expected to reach 1.01 million, with a penetration rate of about 25%. Guosheng Securities (002670) research believes that, based on an average annual mileage of 120,000 km per vehicle and an average fare of 2 yuan/km, the Robotaxi market size in China’s first- and second-tier cities could reach RMB 242.4 billion by 2030, and the global Robotaxi market could reach approximately $63 billion, roughly RMB 500 billion.