The autonomous driving company, previously incubated as an “other bets” project under the umbrella of , says it has raised a staggering $2.25 billion in financing from investors including , the , and Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund . Other firms including , global automotive supplier , pre-owned vehicle listing service , and its corporate parent Alphabet also participated in Waymo’s round.

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“We’ve always approached our mission as a team sport, collaborating with our [original equipment manufacturer] and supplier partners, our operations partners and the communities we serve to build and deploy the world’s most experienced driver,” said , CEO of Waymo. 鈥淭oday, we’re expanding that team, adding financial investors and important strategic partners who bring decades of experience investing in and supporting successful technology companies building transformative products. With this injection of capital and business acumen, alongside Alphabet, we鈥檒l deepen our investment in our people, our technology and our operations, all in support of the deployment of the Waymo Driver around the world.鈥�

Waymo did not say, precisely, what it will do with its newfound cash, but it did share a number of development and business milestones. The company says its autonomous Waymo Driver platform has driven “more than 20 million miles on public roads across over 25 cities, and over 10 billion miles in simulation.” Waymo added that the company has already shipped its first L4 autonomous vehicles (which include electric vehicles and Class 8 trucks, according to the company) with the company’s latest hardware and beefed onboard sensors and compute hardware.

The company also provided updates about Waymo One, its on-demand autonomous car service which currently operates in Arizona. The service has already provided thousands of trips to locals “in a high-speed mixed usage market area larger than San Francisco.”

The deal comes 10 months after rival self-driving car outfit at an approximate $18 billion post-money valuation. The , , and automakers and participated in the raise.

TechCrunch in March 2019 that the company was seeking outside investment at a lofty valuation. In September, to $105 billion from $175 billion, based on its discounted cashflows.

No information about the company’s valuation or other terms of today’s financing have been disclosed at this time.

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After all, there is already a venture-backed robotic coffee shop actually based in San Francisco: Cafe X. The company raised $12 million Series A about a year ago, and has three locations currently across the Financial District – but until now it wasn鈥檛 in the airport.

That is about to change according to Cafe X founder and CEO Henry Hu when the company expands to SFO in November.

Is there enough room for two robot coffee shops in the Bay? More importantly, is there a need? I caught up with both companies to learn about trends within food automation, interesting go-to-market strategies, and the idea of experiential java.

Austin-based Briggo Brings The Brew

Briggo, which started by serving fully autonomous coffee in 2011 at University of Texas, has raised $19 million to date, and is currently raising a Series B, per CEO and co-founder . For the upcoming round, Briggo has already secured one investor: , an early and growth stage venture capital firm based in Austin.

The company opened up a 鈥溾�� in SFO in August to serve 24 hour coffee. This is the company鈥檚 .

While its roots are in Austin, Briggo鈥檚 SFO location serves and , two San Francisco brands.

鈥淸Airports] are a great place for international exposure,鈥� Nater said on the phone to SA国际传媒 News. He added that the company, to increase focus on the airport market, has recently signed large contracts to expand into multiple states across the largest airports in the country.

Briggo鈥檚 Nater said its competitive advantage is the fact that its been on the market longer than most autonomous coffee robots.

鈥淲e flat out have longer experience and more engagement with customers in the Bay than Cafe X,鈥� Nater said. 鈥淭heir purchasing experience is pretty much a mirror of what we were doing already.鈥�

He added: 鈥淎nd they’ve got a wonderful 60 degree access robot that entertains the customer. But yeah, we’re probably a little bit more industrial food driven, and not so much entertainment driven.鈥�

I caught up with Cafe X to learn if 鈥渆ntertaining the customer鈥� has been an effective strategy.

San Fran鈥檚 Cafe X Brings The Fun

This fall Cafe X will be offering an 鈥渆xperiential鈥� coffee shop to airport goers. Since raising its Series A, Cafe X has created three locations, and with that, taken lessons from each Hu said.

Fundamentally, a barista robot might seem focused on speed but now Cafe X is devoting more energy (and resources) to create ambiance.

For the upcoming location, Cafe X wants to be less robot, more old school coffee. Think menu board and backdrops.

鈥淚t’s not just going to be like a lonely robotic coffee bar sitting there against the wall,鈥� Hu said on the phone.

At first the company outsourced a ton of its hardware engineering talent. Now, with 38 people working at the company, Cafe X has moved those processes in-house and it has helped efficiency, said Hu.

鈥淚nstead of using people to do repetitive tasks, like pushing buttons, we think labor should be used to do more productive and more impactful things like educating customers on our ingredients and expanding the menu and doing customer service,鈥� he said.

A Cuppa Innovation

We are, rightfully, not in the business of making predictions about the success of startups. However, after talking to Briggo and Cafe X, I do believe there鈥檚 room for differential innovation within this space. As innovation within coffee enters our lives, it will be interesting to see where automation collides with other parts of our palate.

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Ride-hailing companies don’t make money. It’s nearly a law of business. I think that we can add another, related writ to the first, namely that autonomous driving startups always need another billion dollars.

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Or more, as we learned today on the news that has picked up $2.6 billion in what “capital and assets” including a $1 billion primacy investment, a $500 million secondary buy of shares from Ford, among other transactions in the VW-led deal.

You have heard of Argo AI (we’ve covered it here, and here), but I doubt that you knew the scale of capital that the group has needed to power its operations. For example, Argo raised $1 billion in commitments from before the current capital event.

Argo is worth around $7 billion after the transaction.

The new funds mean that Argo, one player in the realm of autonomous driving, is closer to $4 billion in capital raised than it is to $3 billion if I’m adding correctly (there’s some nuance to the deal structure). And what strikes my memory is how that sum isn’t shocking when we consider other huge deals in the niche.

Here’s a quick rundown of some recent deals in the autonomous sector:

• $100 million for LiDar technology in聽 . The San Francisco-based company has now raised $250 million to date.
• $1.15 billion for , part of the General Motors world. The recent transaction follows a , and several smaller investments. The firm’s total capital raised is, if we’re adding correctly this early on a Friday, around $5.5 billion.
• $1 billion for , which had previously found financing from Uber’s own coffers. That became ruinous, so Uber found friends to share the load.
• $940 million for , a company building a “self-driving vehicle made for local goods transportation” picked up nearly $1 billion in February, 2019. This time it was SoftBank money of all things. But what’s clear is that there are folks in the autonomous driving world willing to remove humans entirely from cars. That’s actually cool.
• $530 million for , a San Francisco-based autonomous driving startup that has now raised $690 million after counting its huge . The firm later into its coffers.

Toss in and the picture becomes even more crowded. Bear in mind that all the above rounds are merely the $100 million or greater rounds invested into autonomous driving companies since the start of 2019. Loosen the rules, say, adding rounds between $50 million and $100 million, and you can find even more deals.

All this to say that the venture-backed and corporate-sponsored bet on self-driving technology is getting longer and longer each day. And so far as I can tell from where I sit, only has managed to begin anything approaching .

How long these bets can continue before any player in the space can show even a partial return on investment in other than mark-up terns isn’t clear. But the answer as far as today goes is one word: longer.

Update: Luminar’s total funds raised was updated after publication, per the company’s own information.

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