Partnering with Waymo to Reshape how the World Moves
Sequoia by Konstantine Buhler and Abhishek Malani
Sequoia is co-leading Waymo’s $16 billion round. The bet: robot taxis are no longer a demo; they’re already hauling millions of paid rides.
Based on reporting by Sequoia, by Konstantine Buhler and Abhishek Malani — read the original for the full story.
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Sequoia is putting its name on a very large bet: it says it is co-leading Waymo’s $16 billion investment round with Dragoneer and DST Global. The firm’s case is simple and blunt. Autonomous driving isn’t a moonshot anymore. It is already running in public, at commercial scale, and the only real question is how fast it spreads.
The pitch starts with safety. Sequoia points to 1,190,000 road traffic deaths in a year and says the technology to reduce that toll is no longer hypothetical. Waymo has logged 127 million fully autonomous miles, and the company says that has translated into a 90% reduction in serious injury crashes. That’s the sort of stat investors love because it’s both moral and measurable.
But the business side is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here too. Waymo says it delivered more than 15 million paid rides in 2025 alone. It now logs more than 400,000 rides every week across six major U.S. metro areas. These are not people taking a novelty spin. They’re using the service to get to work, see family, and move through daily life.
Sequoia is leaning hard on the idea that every added mile and every new city makes the system better. It calls that a compounding data cycle, and it argues that Waymo is becoming infrastructure, not just a flashy AI demo. The firm also sees a vast market behind it: transportation is a $7 trillion global business, and autonomous mobility is one of the big transitions inside it.
Waymo’s next move sounds aggressive. With the new capital, it is targeting 20 additional cities this year, mostly in the U.S. but with some international markets in the mix. Sequoia says the recent Miami launch showed the playbook: win trust on safety, then scale. The company is also expanding its fleet and hiring for the demand it expects to keep climbing.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is what happens when a frontier-tech story stops being about vibes and starts looking like a utility bill. The real tell is not the $16 billion headline; it’s the paid rides, the weekly volume, and the city-by-city grind. Everyone loves to talk about AI replacing work. Waymo is trying the less glamorous trick of replacing commuting, which is a much better use of silicon and a much better use of time.
Read more about this at: Sequoia
