How to Buy Waymo Stock Before Its IPO

Waymo — which started out in 2009 as Google's self-driving car project before being spun out as an independent company — is the leader in the development of fully autonomous vehicles (AVs).

Users in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin can use the Waymo app to hail autonomous taxi rides.

It's like Uber or Lyft but without a driver.

In October 2024, Waymo raised an additional $5.6 billion to expand operations into Atlanta, Miami, and Washington DC.* The funding valued Waymo at $45 billion.

*In May 2025, Waymo also announced plans to expand into Boston.

And robotaxis are just one of the potential applications of its technology.

Waymo's self-driving technology could be used for public transportation, trucking, and personal vehicles. The AV sector is expected to grow to $614.9 billion by 2030, and the lion's share of that market will likely go to just a few players.

Given its market-leading position, it's hard to imagine a scenario where Waymo isn't one of them. And for early investors, the returns could be huge.

Here's how to buy Waymo stock in 2025, before it goes public.

Can you buy Waymo stock?

Waymo is a private company and has not indicated any plans to IPO in the near future. There is no Waymo stock symbol and you can't buy it in your brokerage account.

Waymo has access to plenty of funding (more on that below) and has a backlog of companies that want to partner with it. At this point, there's no need for it to turn to the public markets.

But if you don't want to wait for its IPO to invest, there is a way you can invest in Waymo stock today.

How to buy Waymo stock in 2025

There are multiple ways to invest in Waymo, though it depends on which type of investor you are.

Accredited investors can invest directly in Waymo via a platform called Hiive. This is covered in the next section.

Accreditation requirements

To qualify as an accredited investor, you must meet one of the following criteria:

• Have an annual income of $200,000 individually or $300,000 jointly.
• Have a net worth that exceeds $1,000,000, excluding your main residence.
• Be a qualifying financial professional.

If you don't qualify as an accredited investor, there are a few other ways to invest in Waymo and the AV industry in general. I cover those in the second section below.

1. How to buy Waymo stock as an accredited investor

Hiive is an investment platform that allows accredited investors to buy shares of high-growth, VC-backed startups and private companies, including Waymo:

There are 10 live orders of Waymo stock currently available on Hiive. At the time of this writing, shares are trading at $59.26.

Employees, founders, venture capital and hedge funds, angel investors, etc. — anyone with shares to sell can create a listing on Hiive. Investors can place bids and negotiate with sellers or just accept their asking prices.

Sign up to see the Waymo listing (number of shares and asking price) available on Hiive:

Register for Hiive

2. How to invest in Waymo as a retail investor

If you're not an accredited investor, here are a few investment ideas that can give you exposure to Waymo or the autonomous vehicle industry in general.

1. Invest in Waymo's investors

The most obvious way for a retail investor to invest in Waymo is via an investment in Alphabet (GOOGL), Google's parent company.

Based on my estimates (math in a later chapter), Google likely owns ~80% of Waymo. If Waymo is worth $45 billion (its most recent valuation), that stake is worth $36 billion, which makes up just 1.7% of Google's $2.1 trillion business.

Still, if Waymo becomes a dominant player in the AV industry, it could become an increasingly large contributor to Google's revenue.

AutoNation (AN) is another public company that owns a stake in Waymo. AutoNation has participated in two of Waymo's funding rounds, though its exact stake is unknown (likely a few hundred million).

But given AutoNation's $7.6 billion market cap, its stake in Waymo is unlikely to have much of an impact on its stock price.

2. Invest in publicly traded competitors

Tesla 

Waymo's primary competitor in AVs is Tesla (TSLA), which released Autopilot (its self-driving feature) back in 2014.

Teslas have long been equipped with the necessary hardware and software to function autonomously but had yet to be approved for self-driving because of safety concerns.*

*Although its technology has been good enough for many users to use it autonomously, all self-driving features technically require “hands-on” driver assistance.

However, that all changed in June 2025 when Tesla officially launched a limited deployment of its robotaxi service — known as Tesla Cybercab — in Austin, Texas.

The event marked the first time Tesla cars have carried paying riders without human drivers, a feature Musk has been promising for almost a decade.

Uber

Ride-hailing companies Uber (UBER) and Lyft (LYFT) are also working to develop their own autonomous vehicle technology.

However, if they can't build the technology on their own, they'll need to partner with Waymo or Tesla.

While Waymo and Tesla have a head start in the technology, Uber and Lyft have long lists of existing ride-hailers and pre-built apps, which could be valuable.

Additional options

Additional AV manufacturers include Aurora, Nuro, Luminar Technologies, and Motional.

Although there are many competitors, Waymo is by far the most established, with Tesla being the only real competitor at this point.

What does Waymo actually do?

Waymo was founded in 2009 as the Google Self-Driving Car Project.

The company designs and builds the hardware and software required to make autonomous vehicles. The hardware includes sensors, cameras, radar, and more.

Unlike Tesla, Waymo does not plan to build its own vehicles, instead partnering with car manufacturers (like Jaguar) so it can focus exclusively on AV technology.

In addition to the hardware and software involved, Waymo must create the infrastructure required to operate in a new city. This involves mapping out the territory, such as intersections, turn lanes, curbs, crosswalks, and more.

While the technology can operate solely from its real-time sensors, this added layer of infrastructure data makes each route much safer.

Any Waymo vehicle can use its sensors to plot a new territory and upload the plot to its network to be used by all other Waymo vehicles.

Does Google own Waymo?

Waymo was launched by Google in 2009. It was re-branded as Waymo in 2016 but remained a self-contained project wholly owned by Google until 2020.

In March 2020, Waymo raised $2.25 billion at a valuation of $30 billion. This implies Google sold about 7.5% of its stake in Waymo, leaving it with 92.5% ownership.

Waymo raised an additional $750 million in May of 2020 and another $2.5 billion in June of 2021, though no valuation figures were released.

If we assume a $30 billion valuation at both of these rounds, that would imply Google sold another 10.8%, reducing its ownership to 81.7%.

In October 2024, Waymo raised another $5.6 billion at a $45 billion valuation in an oversubscribed Series C round.

Alphabet led the Series C, so I estimate it still owns ~80% of Waymo.

In addition to Alphabet (Google's parent company), investors include T. Rowe Price (TROW), Magna International, Silver Lake, Canada Pension Plan, Tiger Global Management, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, Perry Creek Capital, and AutoNation (AN).

Google has another company, Wing, which is an autonomous drone delivery business that uses technology similar to Waymo's. Wing is entirely owned by Google, so the only way to invest in it is by owning Alphabet (GOOGL) stock.

However, you can invest in Zipline stock, Wing's primary competitor, on Hiive.

How to buy the Waymo IPO

Waymo has made no indication of any plans to IPO. However, if you want to invest in it when it does go public, you'll need a brokerage account.

If you don't have a brokerage account, we recommend Public.

On Public, you can Invest in stocks, ETFs, treasuries, and cryptocurrencies, all on one of the most well-designed investing platforms.

Waymo valuation chart

Analysts at Morgan Stanley have been bullish on Waymo since 2017.

In May 2017, the firm valued the company at $70 billion. About a year later, they raised that number to $175 billion, despite the project being pre-revenue.

In September 2019, Morgan Stanley cut its valuation by 40% to $105 billion, due to Waymo's commercialization taking longer than expected to develop.

However, no external funding was raised at any of these valuations — they were all estimates.

Using Morgan Stanley's estimates, plus the two publicly disclosed valuations ($30 billion in March 2020 and $45 billion in October 2024), here's a look at how Waymo's valuation has changed over time: