The self-driving robot taxi service Waymo announcing it is closed to more than $5 billion funding round this morning looking to outside investors.

Despite the big balance sheet of its parent company alphabet,

Deirdre Rosa brought us that news this morning in the nine and joins us now for today's

Tech.

Hi again, Dee.

Hey Carl, so here's what it probably comes down to spending on artificial intelligence

build out the infrastructure. That's an easier proposition. spending on

artificial intelligence build out the infrastructure. That's an easier proposition for

alphabet investors than spending on robot taxis, especially since they're only

operating in a few markets for now and the unit is still losing a lot of money. Now raising

outside capital that lets Google continue to grow this business while not being a

drag on the broader balance sheet and potentially making it easier to spin out in the future.

Now the $5.6 billion series C round that was led by alphabet,

participation from Fidelity, Andresen Horwitz, Silver Lake, Tiger Global, among others.

Weymos Co-Cosios say that this funding

is going to let them further expand

and advance the Waymo driver to, quote,

support a variety of business applications over time suggesting that this technology

could be used for more than just its own robot taxis down the road. Now here is

where Waimo operates at the moment, primarily the sunbelt, as you can see,

which offers mostly dry and sunny weather

in states like Arizona that have a friendly

...