Sixteen billion dollars. For context, that's more than the GDP of half the countries on Earth, and it's going into self-driving cars that still need remote human monitors.

Google's self-driving car unit Waymo has raised $16 billion in its latest funding round, reaching a valuation of $110 billion. It's one of the largest funding rounds in tech history and signals continued belief in autonomous vehicles despite years of unfulfilled promises.

But here's what's different from previous autonomous vehicle hype cycles: Waymo actually has cars on the road, giving paid rides, in real cities.

The round was "three times oversubscribed." Alphabet contributed over three-quarters of the amount, with Sequoia Capital, DST Global, and Dragoneer Investment Group joining existing backers like Andreessen Horowitz and Abu Dhabi's Mubadala.

The valuation more than doubled from $45 billion in October 2024 — a remarkable jump that suggests investors believe Waymo has crossed some critical threshold.

And the numbers back that up. Annual recurring revenue grew to over $350 million in 2025, up from Bank of America's earlier projection of $50-75 million for 2024. The company operates robotaxi services across six U.S. cities — San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Miami, Austin, and Atlanta.

They've logged over 125 million fully autonomous miles. They expect to host one million weekly rides in 2026, up from 250,000 in spring 2024. That's not a pilot program. That's a business.

Expansion plans for 2026 include Detroit, Las Vegas, Nashville, Washington DC, and — most notably — London, their first international commercial deployment. They're also testing in Tokyo.

The technology is impressive. The question is whether a $110B valuation is based on what they can do now, or what VCs hope they'll do eventually.

Let's be honest about what Waymo has actually achieved. They can operate autonomous taxis in specific cities with good weather and well-mapped roads. That's genuinely impressive. It's also a far cry from the "fully autonomous vehicles everywhere" vision that's been promised for the last decade.

The cars still need remote monitors. They still struggle in heavy rain. They still get confused by construction zones. They're better than they've ever been, but they're not magic.

And there are real concerns. NHTSA and NTSB are investigating incidents involving school buses and a child struck during school drop-off operations. Those aren't minor edge cases. Those are exactly the scenarios where autonomous systems need to be flawless.

But here's why this round matters: $16 billion buys a lot of runway. It means Waymo can keep expanding, keep improving, keep losing money on every ride while they scale. It means they can outlast competitors who don't have Google's backing.

That's the real story here. Not that autonomous vehicles are ready for mass deployment, but that investors are willing to bet $110 billion that Waymo will be the one to figure it out.

The technology is impressive. The business model is unproven. And $16 billion is a very expensive bet that the gap will close.