Waymo Closes $5 Billion Debt Financing
On October 8, Waymo announced the completion of a $5 billion term loan, its first debt financing, secured by intellectual property. The lenders include Blackstone, PIMCO and Sixth Street.
As of October 2026, Waymo operates in 15 U.S. cities with a fleet of more than 4,000 vehicles, completing more than 500,000 paid trips per week. Waymo began its first testing outside the United States in Tokyo in 2026 and has announced plans to enter more than 20 cities including London and New York.
Tesla Adds 150 Cybercabs in One Day
On the same day, Texas motor vehicle records showed Tesla registered 150 Cypecabs in a single day, bringing the model's total to 319, the largest single-day increase since the vehicle entered the registration system.
Tesla's Cybercab began operations in Texas in early September and is planned to support all-weather operation through FSD iterations. Cypecab also launched static exhibition tours in Beijing and Shanghai and in Hong Kong, with no commercial operation arrangements in the Chinese market.
In September, when the Cybercab was newly launched, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced a review of about 1,000 Cybercabs to assess how Tesla self-certified that the vehicle, which has no steering wheel or pedals, meets federal safety standards.
IIHS Study Reports Lower Crash Rate for Waymo
An independent study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety covering about 50 million miles of autonomous driving operations found Waymo had 1.28 reportable crashes per million miles, compared with 4.06 for human drivers.