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For tech giants that are diving into self-driving tech or have grand plans for their own cars, that push isn’t just about breaking into a new market — it’s about defending valuable turf.

Waymo, Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving car unit, said it raised $2.5 billion in a recent funding round to help advance its technology and replace a management team rocked by departures.

Rivian Automotive Inc., the electric-vehicle startup backed by Amazon .com Inc., has hired a former finance chief from Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving arm Waymo.

The road to autonomous trucking is long and littered with obstacles, but developers of self-driving systems for commercial vehicles are making clear and tangible progress in their mission to bring this technology to market.

Waymo is talking to outside investors about raising as much as $4 billion in additional capital to fuel its self-driving efforts. And the company has discussed plans to eventually list publicly, spinning out from its parent Alphabet Inc., according to people familiar with the plans.

Lucid Motors Inc., the Saudi Arabia-backed electric vehicle maker going public via a reverse merger, has hired a former executive of Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo as chief financial officer.

John Krafcik stepped down as chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo self-driving vehicle division, and will stay on as an adviser to the business, the company said in a memo.

Autonomous vehicle developer Waymo offered a look inside the day-to-day testing of its self-driving trucks on public roads through a virtual ride-along event for members of the press.

Tesla Inc. has taken a misguided approach to developing fully autonomous cars and its “full self-driving” system will fail to live up to its billing, the head of Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo told a German business magazine.

Outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Anthony Levandowski, saving the engineer from more than a year in prison for stealing trade secrets from his former employer, Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo.