Waymo Borrows for the First Time: a 5 Billion Dollar Loan for Its Robotaxis, While Two US Agencies Investigate It Over School Buses

Five billion dollars (about 4.3 billion euros) - that is how much Waymo, the robotaxi company under the umbrella of Google owner Alphabet, has borrowed. It is the first debt in its history. Among the lenders are PIMCO, Blackstone and Sixth Street, and the list goes on with Apollo, Blue Owl, Oaktree, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, T. Rowe Price, Capital Group and several more big Wall Street names. The whole arrangement was led by Goldman Sachs.

Until now Waymo lived off money from its parent company and outside investors. In February it raised 16 billion dollars (about 13.8 billion euros) at a valuation of 126 billion dollars, and before that 5.6 billion in 2024, 2.5 billion in 2021 and 3.2 billion in 2020. Now the company presents this as a step in its evolution into a "growing commercial business". Translation: the robotaxi is no longer an experiment funded by believers, but a business lenders are willing to lend to.

Waymo says the loan will give it financial flexibility and strengthen its balance sheet, so it can seize "the significant opportunities ahead, especially as a business with proven commercial demand and improved road safety outcomes in the communities where we operate". How much exactly it will spend, and on what, it didn't say.

The expansion is real. From a project inside Google that spent years running tests around Silicon Valley, Waymo reached Phoenix in 2016, and in August 2023 got the final permit to charge for rides in California. Today it operates in 15 markets: Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, Tampa and others. It is testing in London and Tokyo and plans to launch service there too. Europe, for now, is watching the story from the sidewalk.

But the investigations are growing along with the fleet. The US traffic safety agency NHTSA opened an investigation into the robotaxis' illegal behavior around school buses, and then a second one, after a Waymo vehicle hit a child near a school. The child suffered minor injuries, and the vehicle was traveling at about 10 kilometers per hour. This year the National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB, also opened its own investigation, after robotaxis were repeatedly seen illegally passing stopped school buses in at least two US states. The lenders have bet on demand. Will the money arrive faster than the answer to why the machine doesn't stop for a school bus?