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.
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.
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.