Waymo to Quintuple Robotaxi Fleet to 20,000 on $5B Debt

Waymo told Semafor it plans to double its robotaxi fleet to 8,000 vehicles by the end of 2026 and reach 20,000 by the end of 2027, up from roughly 4,000 today, with the ramp funded by a $5 billion private-credit raise that Alphabet did not guarantee.

The debt is Waymo's first and lets the company borrow against its own operations rather than its parent's balance sheet. Deal terms also permit future securitization of fleet leases, which would unlock additional capacity as new vehicles come online. Waymo has said the money was "raised to grow internationally and in the US."

The hardware is largely coming from China. The company is ordering thousands of rebranded Zeekr cars built by a unit of Geely Holding Group, which Semafor's Ellen DiMauro describes as "CCP-linked." That sourcing choice puts a US self-driving leader on a Chinese EV platform at a moment when the politics around Chinese vehicles in the United States are hardening.

Service today runs across 15 US cities, with a Nashville operations facility opened with Lyft to handle charging, cleaning, and maintenance, and Toronto lined up as the first non-US market. The company "declined to comment" on the specific fleet numbers.

Our tracker has logged 53 autonomous-vehicle alerts in the last 90 days, with Rivian's push to build its own in-vehicle AI models and the Ninth Circuit decertifying a Tesla FSD fraud class both landing in the same week.