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Alphabet Self-Driving Unit Waymo Raises $2.5B in Latest Funding
By: TheStreet | June 16, 2021

• After its latest funding round, Alphabet's self-driving unit, Waymo, is now valued at just over $30 billion, according to some estimates.

Alphabet's (GOOGL) self-driving unit, Waymo, raised $2.5 billion from investors including Alphabet itself, Andreessen Horowitz, Silver Lake, and Tiger Global, among others.

The company is now valued at just over $30 billion by some estimates, Reuters reported. Alphabet hasn't disclosed a valuation for Waymo.

"Our mission is to make it safe and easy for people and things to get where they’re going, and we’re grateful to our investors for believing in this mission, in our technology, and in us," the company said in a blog post Wednesday.

The funding round included 10 participants. Alphabet plans to use the funds to advance Waymo Driver, the software behind the company's autonomous vehicles.

Waymo is the first company to self-operate a fully autonomous, public ride-hailing service, Waymo One. The company has been running self-driving vehicle services in Phoenix and in San Francisco and the Bay Area.

Alphabet shares at last check were little changed around $2,428.

On Tuesday, General Motors said that its autonomous car company, Cruise, garnered a $5 billion credit line from GM's finance unit, GM Financial.

The money will be used to help Cruise build its electric-battery autonomous shuttle, Origin. Cruise has started building about 100 of the units, Bloomberg reports.

“GM is working with Cruise and providing a $5 billion line of credit so we can efficiently finance the expansion of our fleet as we scale up over the next few years,” Cruise Chief Executive Dan Ammann wrote in a blog on Tuesday.

“This bumps up Cruise’s total war chest to over $10 billion as we enter commercialization.”

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