Mountain View, California - Waymo, the autonomous driving tech development company owned by Google's parent Alphabet Inc., on Wednesday announced a $2.5 billion investment round.

The company said it will use the funds for advancing its autonomous driving technology and growing its team.

The fresh round of funding saw participation from Alphabet, Andreessen Horowitz, AutoNation, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Magna International, Mubadala Investment Company, Perry Creek Capital, Silver Lake, funds and accounts advised by T Rowe Price Associates, Inc, Temasek and Tiger Global.

The news comes just a few months after former chief executive John Krafcik announced in April that he was stepping down after five years at the helm of the company.

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The company is being run by Tekedra Mawakana, former chief operating officer, and Dmitri Dolgov, who joined the original self-driving project at Google and was chief technology officer.

Earlier, Alphabet used to financially support Waymo, however, the company has been receiving criticism for its slow growth.

Last March, Waymo announced that it raised $2.25 billion in its first external funding round. By July 2020, the company said it raised a total of $3.2 billion after an extension of that round.

Earlier this month, Waymo announced that it was entering a "test run" with JB Hunt for transportation services between Houston and Fort Worth. For the pilot operation, the companies have chosen Interstate 45 in Texas, where Waymo's class 8 autonomous will carry the freight from Houston to Fort Worth.

The company has already deployed its autonomous cars in Phoenix as a ride-hailing service.