UAE State Fund Takes Part in $2.25 Billion Investment in ‘Self-Driving Google Car’

Abu Dhabi’s state-owned sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala, has co-led a massive $2.25 billion investment in Waymo, the autonomous driving technology company which started life as the ‘Google Self-Driving Car Project’ in 2009.

Now operating as a standalone enterprise under Google’s parent company, Alphabet, Waymo’s huge new investment was also co-led by Silver Lake and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, with participation from Magna International, Andreessen Horowitz, AutoNation, and Alphabet itself.

It’s believed that the investment will be channelled into a range of different projects, including Waymo’s commercial ride-hailing service, Waymo One, which launched at the end of 2018 in select areas of Phoenix, Arizona. The investment will also likely be used for the company’s latest project, Waymo Via, a self-driving trucking service.

While it was hailed as a huge step forward for a technology that has been trialled and tested in one form or another since the mid-1980s, Waymo’s journey hasn’t been without its pot-holes, with the company’s cars involved in several traffic accidents over the years.