PIMCO, Blackstone and Sixth Street led the loan, with Apollo, Blue Owl, HPS and Oaktree among 14 named lenders. It closed the same week an Nvidia-backed data-center developer abandoned its IPO and turned to private capital.
Alphabet's self-driving unit has taken on debt for the first time, and the money came largely from asset managers rather than banks' own balance sheets.
Waymo said on Thursday that it had closed a $5 billion term loan, which it described as "an important step in our evolution into a scaling commercial enterprise." PIMCO, Blackstone and Sixth Street were the lead lenders. Capital Group, Loomis Sayles and T. Rowe Price were significant lenders. Apollo, Blue Owl, Diameter Capital Partners, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, HPS Investment Partners and Oaktree also participated. Goldman Sachs was the sole lead bookrunner.
The terms
Waymo did not disclose the maturity, interest rate, security or whether Alphabet supports the loan. The loan was reported to have been priced at 5.25 percentage points over the benchmark rate, and to have been increased from more than $3 billion during marketing.
Waymo was valued at about $126 billion in a funding round in February. The loan equals about 4% of that figure.
Who lent
The lender list spans two worlds. PIMCO, Capital Group, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton and Loomis Sayles are primarily bond and mutual-fund managers. Blackstone, Sixth Street, Apollo, Blue Owl, HPS and Oaktree are among the largest private-credit firms. Waymo noted that participation may include funds and accounts managed by those institutions.
The same week
The loan closed a day before Firmus Grid, an Nvidia-backed Australian data-center company, withdrew its planned listing and said it would seek private capital. Blackstone appears on both sides of the week: it led Waymo's loan and invested in Firmus' August equity round.
The two deals point in the same direction from different angles. Growth companies tied to AI and automation are raising large sums without going public, and private lenders and investors are supplying it, at a price.
The investor debate
Read one way, the loan is a sign of strength. A pre-IPO company raised $5 billion, apparently more than it first sought, from some of the largest credit investors in the world, and kept its ownership intact while doing so.
A second reading is that the price tells a different story. A spread of about 5.25 points over the benchmark, for a unit of one of the world's largest technology groups, adds fixed interest costs to a business still spending heavily to expand its robotaxi fleet.
Next disclosures
Alphabet's quarterly filings may give more detail on the loan's structure and whether the parent backs it. Waymo's expansion pace, and whether other pre-IPO companies follow with loans of similar size, will show whether this becomes a standard path.