Mubadala has joined Silver Lake, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Magna International, and Andreessen Horowitz among others to invest $2.25bn in Waymo, the self-driving firm owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
Waleed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi, Mubadala’s Deputy Group CEO and CEO of Alternative Investments and Infrastructure, commented: “Mubadala has built a strong portfolio of technology companies which are transforming sectors that are large, significant, and global. The investment in Waymo, and partnership with Alphabet, is based on our conviction that autonomous technologies will revolutionize mobility and transportation over the next decade. In addition to partnering with one of the world’s leading technology companies, this is about investing and backing one of the strongest management and technical teams in the industry. “
John Krafcik, CEO of Waymo, added: “We’ve always approached our mission as a team sport, partnering with Alphabet, our business partners, and the communities we serve to build and deploy the world’s most experienced driver. Today, we’re expanding that team, adding financial investors and important strategic partners who bring decades of experience investing in and supporting successful technology companies building transformative products. With this injection of capital and business acumen, alongside Alphabet, we’ll deepen our investment in our people, our technology, and our operations, all in support of the deployment of the Waymo Driver around the world.”
Egon Durban, Co-CEO of Silver Lake, concluded: “Waymo is the proven leader in self-driving technology, is the only autonomous vehicle company with a public ride-hailing service, and is successfully scaling its fully driverless experience. We’re deeply aligned with Waymo’s commitment to making our roads safer, and look forward to working together to help advance and scale the Waymo Driver in the U.S. and beyond.”
The latest investment round follows a recent series of major operational and technical milestones achieved by Waymo. Its vehicles have now self-driven more than 20 million miles on public roads across over 25 cities, and over 10 billion miles in simulation. Engineers and technicians at Waymo’s Detroit factory, the world’s first factory dedicated to the mass production of L4 autonomous vehicles, have shipped the first vehicles (electric cars and Class 8 trucks) integrated with the fifth generation of hardware, providing all-new, more powerful computing and more capable sensing.
Waymo One, the world’s first public self-driving ride-hailing service, serves thousands of customers in Arizona, and has already provided thousands of fully driverless rides in a high-speed mixed usage market area larger than San Francisco. The Waymo Driver is now deployed across a variety of vehicle platforms and business applications, including Waymo Via, which is focused on all forms of goods delivery.
Since 2008, Mubadala has been an active investor in advanced technology, and today has global presence with offices in Abu Dhabi, London, New York and San Francisco. On the growth side, Mubadala has partnered with leading technology growth funds.
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