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The largest financing in the autonomous driving industry has been refreshed again this year.

In May, British artificial intelligence company Wayve completed a $1.05 billion financing, becoming the largest financing in the autonomous driving industry at the time.

Immediately afterwards, on July 23rd, Eastern Time, Google's parent company Alphabet held a second-quarter earnings call, and its Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat announced that Alphabet will invest an additional $5 billion (approximately RMB 36.4 billion) in its autonomous driving subsidiary Waymo in the next few years.

This investment is not only the largest financing in the autonomous driving industry this year, but also the largest single investment Waymo has ever announced.

The reason for choosing to continue investing, Porat explained, is that Google will focus on improving the overall efficiency of its "other investments" department, and Waymo is an important example, "it not only has a technological lead, but also has made progress in operational performance."

In 2016, Google spun off its self-driving car business from the X lab to form a new company, Waymo, which became a subsidiary of its parent company Alphabet.

As the big brother in the Robotaxi industry, in 2018, Waymo launched the autonomous driving passenger service Waymo One and went online in Phoenix. This is seen as the beginning of the commercialization of global driverless taxis (Robotaxi).

Waymo first raised $2.25 billion in March 2020. In May of that year, several new investors added to Waymo's first round of financing, expanding it to $3 billion. The purpose of this additional financing is to develop Waymo Via, which is a freight and cargo transportation service extended by Waymo's driverless technology.

On June 17, 2021, Waymo announced the completion of a $2.5 billion financing, which once became the largest financing in the driverless field in 2021. Investors in this round include Alphabet, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Mubadala Investment Company, Fidelity Management and Research Company, Magna International, Temasek, Tiger Global Management, etc. The purpose of the financing is to promote Waymo's driverless taxi service to more markets.

At the end of 2019, Waymo launched the Waymo One App on the App Store. Just like other taxi-hailing apps, users only need to place an order on the App, and nearby driverless taxis will accept the order, automatically arrive at the passenger pick-up point, and take the passenger to the destination.

Waymo currently has driverless taxi operations in San Francisco, California, Phoenix, Arizona, and Los Angeles, California.

Last month, Waymo announced that it would allow anyone in the city to hail a ride through its app, without having to wait in line for an appointment. Earlier this year, Waymo also received a permit for paid ride services in Los Angeles. Starting July 1, Waymo will provide paid ride services within a 63-square-mile area from Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles. The company is also preparing to launch a commercial driverless service in Austin later this year.

Alphabet noted on the call that Waymo has completed 2 million trips to date and provides more than 50,000 paid rides per week.

It is worth noting that before Alphabet increased its investment in Waymo, Cruise, the self-driving car division of General Motors, said it would indefinitely postpone the production of Origin (a fully driverless electric vehicle).TeslaIt also postponed the launch of its Robotaxi from August 8 to October 10.

Against this backdrop, the huge investment not only shows that Alphabet sees autonomous driving technology as a key part of its future business strategy, but may also help Waymo maintain or expand its leading position in the driverless taxi market against more new and old competitors.

(This article was first published on Titanium Media App, author: Han Jingxian, editor: Zhang Min)