Johan Land

DealWire.TECH Deal of the Week - Feb. 20, 2026. Waymo raises $16B to scale robotaxi infrastructure Deal: $16B late-stage round, Valuation: ~$126B Lead investors: Dragoneer, DST Global, Sequoia, Alphabet Waymo, the autonomous driving unit of Alphabet, has raised a massive $16 billion late-stage round, valuing the company at approximately $126 billion. The financing brings together leading global venture and crossover investors, with Alphabet continuing as the strategic anchor. The raise comes as Waymo transitions from years of R&D and pilots into full-scale commercial deployment. The company already operates fully driverless ride-hailing services in multiple U.S. cities and is targeting rapid geographic expansion, with ambitions to reach 1 million weekly rides by the end of 2026. The new capital will accelerate fleet deployment, expand into new urban markets, and build the infrastructure required to support large-scale autonomous mobility networks. Why this matters: • Autonomous driving becomes infrastructure Waymo’s $16B round reframes robotaxi networks as long-term infrastructure assets rather than experimental tech. • Part of the trillion-dollar AI infrastructure cycle Unlike foundation model raises, this capital is flowing into AI deployed in the physical world—vehicles, sensors, and city-scale operations. • Winner-take-most dynamics emerging Only a few companies globally can fund autonomy at scale, making capital access a key determinant of long-term leadership. • Capital intensity becomes the moat Success will depend not just on algorithms but on financing and operating large fleets and urban logistics networks. • Structural advantage for Waymo More than a decade of development, billions of miles of data, and deep integration with Alphabet’s AI and compute stack give Waymo a meaningful edge as competitors like Tesla and Cruise continue to push forward. • Start of the AI transport wave Robotaxis are likely just the first step toward broader AI-driven autonomy across trucking, logistics, maritime, air cargo, and drone fleets. DealWire Takeaway: Waymo’s $16B financing marks a turning point: autonomous driving is shifting from frontier technology to city-scale AI infrastructure. As AI moves into the physical economy, the winners will be those who combine advanced algorithms with capital, data, and operational scale. Waymo’s latest round positions it among the frontrunners in the emerging autonomous transportation stack. #DealWire #Waymo #AutonomousVehicles #AIInfrastructure #Robotaxi #VentureCapital #FutureOfMobility #ArtificialIntelligence

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🚀 Big milestone for Attio: today announcing a $52M Series B led by GV (Google Ventures), with Michael McBride joining the Board. This follows incredible momentum in customers, revenue, and team growth. But what excites us most remains the same as the very first day I met Nicolas Sharp four years ago, and the reason we have continued to back Attio from Seed through to Series A to now: game-changing product philosophy, world-class technological leadership and delivery, and resulting customer delight. From day one, Nicolas Sharp and Alexander Christie set out to build a new kind of CRM: ✨ Lightning fast and a delight to use ✨ Built on a flexible, modern data model ✨ All designed to give users full control to build a CRM that works for their GTM motion and seamlessly plug into the rest of their stack That foundation has proven to be exactly the right one. A new generation of GTM builders is emerging with Attio as their central pillar - including companies like Lovable, Granola, Modal and more. And the data model is perfect for building native AI functionality and allowing agents to work with the CRM - some of this is live, some is coming soon 👀  Nick and Alex have assembled a stellar team and have impressively scaled the organisation. Congratulations to them all on this funding milestone. Thank you for having us along for the ride over the past few years, and here’s to an epic next chapter ahead.  More from Nick here: https://lnkd.in/easA6jYV

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As promised in my previous post, here are my top 5 companies from the Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) demo day: 1) Rork  Text-to-native mobile apps. #1 in the batch by revenue, idea, and team. Thrilled that it’s already in our portfolio at Mento VC 🙂 2) Limy AI Tool for GEO. Not a brand-new idea, but fast growth and a strong team. All founders are from Unit 8200 (Israel). The CEO served in special forces, led a 5-sniper squad, was wounded twice, and is only 28. 3) Fearn AI tool for drafting IP. A specialized, privacy-first AI for patent law that saves lawyers time by automating routine work. 4) Agent Astra (sr005) AI-enabled M&A roll-up of logistics providers. I was pleasantly surprised to see a roll-up strategy on demo day - I believe in this approach. The niche (logistics) and the “AI-enabled UPS” thesis are still quite ambiguous, though. 5) Metal Super Intelligence for Fundraising. I’ve known the team since 2013 (they also did YC). I don’t think it’s a future unicorn, but they’re doing something genuinely useful for founders and they keep going.

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