Waymo Is Worth Less Than Previously Thought and Is Now Rethinking Its Business Model

Until recently, some investors thought that Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOGL)(NASDAQ: GOOG) self-driving car business, Waymo, was worth over $100 billion. It hadn't generated a profit yet and barely even generated revenue, but the thought was that Waymo was so far ahead with its autonomous car technology that it would eventually grow into an enormously valuable autonomous ride-hailing business.

But earlier this month, news broke that Waymo had raised capital from outside investors for the first time at a much lower valuation, and management may be rethinking the unit's business model.

Alphabet's Waymo LLC raised $2.25 billion of outside capital from a group of investors led by Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm. This comes on the heels of Alphabet's fourth-quarter 2019 conference call, in which CEO Sundar Pichai telegraphed these intentions by stating:

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Source Fool.com