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.

Subscribe to the SA国际传媒 Daily

“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.

Illustration: .

Subscribe to the SA国际传媒 Daily

The financing values the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company at nearly $3 billion, it said, and brings its, according to SA国际传媒 data. Netskope鈥檚 last funding–a $168.7 million –closed in November 2018, propelling it to unicorn status.

New investors and participated in its latest round, as well as all existing investors including (which led its Series F), , , , , and .

Netskope describes itself as an alternative to “legacy, outdated security solutions that have failed to keep up with enterprises’ rapid adoption of new cloud and mobile technology, which have dissolved the ‘perimeter’ of a business’ network that traditional solutions were originally built for.”

Put more simply, Netskope鈥檚 Security Cloud offering aims to give companies visibility and real-time data and threat protection when accessing cloud services, websites and private apps from anywhere, on any device.

Netskope CEO said that when he started the company in 2012, 鈥渋t was clear that the cloud was changing everything, but few saw how it would disrupt security.鈥�

, managing partner at Sequoia Capital Global Equities, said his firm believes Netskope is the 鈥渦nrivaled leader driving innovation鈥� across cloud, data and network security.鈥�

Besides seeing 80 percent enterprise customer growth (25 percent of which is among the Fortune 100), the company says it has boosted its headcount by 50 percent with a focus on engineering and sales. Specifically, Netspoke says it has 1,000 customers and added 300 employees in less than a year’s time. It now has nearly 1,000 employees.

In addition to its new headquarters in Santa Clara, Netskope has opened new offices in Paris, S茫o Paulo, Seattle, New York, St. Louis, San Francisco and Tokyo. It鈥檚 also expanded into new markets including Australia, Singapore, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Italy, Spain and Germany.

As far as vertical markets are concerned, Beri told SA国际传媒 News that “there is not an industry that is immune to the security concerns” Netspoke addresses.

“That in mind, we continue to see massive uptake in regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, and retail,” he said.

Illustration: