a deliberate strategy to establish market-validated pricing, prepare for eventual independence, and impose governance discipline on what has been a protected moonshot project. The move signals that Alphabet is transforming Waymo from an “Other Bets” science experiment into a standalone asset with credible external valuation—likely positioning for an IPO within 2-4 years once profitability arrives.

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philipallstar 4 days ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure how useful this pricing is for the future, as waymo is currently operating on semi-infinite Google money. If that stops, no doubt the price would change too.

	▲	perfmode 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		The counterargument would be that the external investors (Sequoia, Andreessen, Fidelity, etc.) presumably priced in this exact risk when they agreed to pay $110B. They're not naive about Alphabet's role as backstop. The question is whether they believe the "semi-infinite money" assumption is durable enough over their investment horizon.