Waymo Attacks Tesla With $16 Billion Bank Account

No matter what people say, only two companies—Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL | GOOGL Price Prediction) Waymo and Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA)—are fighting for supremacy in the completely self-driving car industry. (This excludes China.) So, Waymo just put $16 billion into its war chest. By some measures, it already has a lead over its rival.

According to The New York Times, the new Waymo funding came from Alphabet, Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global, and Sequoia Capital. The fact that investors outside Alphabet put money in is a vote of confidence. The investment puts Waymo’s valuation at $126 billion. Ford’s market cap is $55 billion and GM’s is $78 billion. The disparity highlights the hurdles to the industry’s growth.

Waymo began in 2009 as the Google Self-Driving Car Project. Its name was changed to Waymo in 2016. Its first completely self-driving car hit the streets of Phoenix in 2020. These did not have an attendant on board, which was a huge advance.

Today, it operates in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, and San Francisco, as well as Austin, Texas. It plans to add new markets soon, 10 in the United States and another in London. Tesla has unsupervised vehicles in Austin and plans to add Dallas, Miami, Las Vegas, and Phoenix to the list. It has supervised cars in other areas, as well.

The holy grail of the industry is to have completely self-driving cars on America’s roads that local or federal governments have approved to operate without a human, eventually anywhere and everywhere.

While the Tesla service operates on Tesla vehicles only, Waymo currently works on Jaguar I-PACE SUVs and Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans. It has been tested on several other models. In theory, other car companies can use it, which gives it a huge universe of manufacturer customers.

Tesla has a great deal riding on its self-driving technology. It is a foot on Elon Musk’s Tesla stool, along with Optimus robots. The new Waymo cash infusion is another threat to Tesla’s plans.

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