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| Waymo LLC | |
|---|---|
| Type | Subsidiary |
| Industry | Autonomous driving, ride-hailing, artificial intelligence |
| Founded | January 17, 2009 (as Google Self-Driving Car Project); December 13, 2016 (as Waymo) |
| Founders | Sebastian Thrun, Anthony Levandowski, Chris Urmson, Mike Montemerlo, Larry Page, Sergey Brin |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California, United States |
| Key people | Tekedra Mawakana (co-CEO), Dmitri Dolgov (co-CEO and CTO), John Krafcik (former CEO, advisor) |
| Products | Waymo One (robotaxi service), Waymo Driver (autonomous driving system), Waymo Via (former trucking unit) |
| Parent | Alphabet Inc. |
| Valuation | $126 billion (post-money, February 2026) |
| Website | waymo.com |
Waymo LLC is an American autonomous driving technology company and subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. The company develops the Waymo Driver, a Level 4 autonomous driving system, and operates Waymo One, the largest commercial robotaxi service in the United States. Waymo started in 2009 as the Google Self-Driving Car Project inside Google X, the experimental research lab of Google, and was spun out as an independent Alphabet subsidiary in December 2016. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is widely regarded as the leader in the commercialization of autonomous vehicles.[1]
As of February 2026, Waymo provides more than 500,000 paid rides per week across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta, and has surpassed 20 million lifetime trips. The company completed approximately 14 million rides in 2025 alone, more than triple the volume from the prior year. Waymo raised a $16 billion investment round in February 2026 at a $126 billion post-money valuation, making it one of the most valuable privately held units within Alphabet.[2][3]
Waymo traces its origins to January 17, 2009, when Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin secretly launched the Google Self-Driving Car Project inside Google X, the company's experimental research lab run by Brin. The project was led by Sebastian Thrun, the former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), together with Anthony Levandowski, founder of 510 Systems and Anthony's Robots. Many of the early engineers, including Dmitri Dolgov, Mike Montemerlo, Hendrik Dahlkamp, Sven Strohband, and David Stavens, came from the Stanford Racing Team that built Stanley and Junior, the entries that won and placed second in the 2005 and 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge competitions.[4]
In its earliest phase, the team retrofitted Toyota Prius hybrids and Lexus RX 450h SUVs with sensors and computers. After nearly two years of stealth testing across more than 140,000 miles, The New York Times revealed the project on October 9, 2010, and Google announced it publicly the same day.[5]
A modified Prius was licensed by the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles in May 2012, becoming the first vehicle in the United States authorized to test fully autonomous driving on public roads. Chris Urmson, a Carnegie Mellon University robotics researcher who led the autonomy team for Carnegie Mellon's winning Urban Challenge entry, joined the project early and rose to lead its software and hardware engineering. Urmson became chief technical officer and the public face of the program before departing in August 2016 to co-found Aurora Innovation.[6]
In 2014, the team began work on a custom prototype known internally as Firefly, often called the koala car or the gumdrop for its rounded, two-seat pod design. Firefly had no steering wheel or pedals and a top speed of 25 miles per hour. On October 20, 2015, Steve Mahan, a legally blind Texan, took a Firefly on a fully driverless ride through Austin, Texas. The trip is recognized as the first fully autonomous ride on public roads in a vehicle with no human-operable controls and no safety driver. Roughly 50 Firefly vehicles were built before the platform was retired in 2017.[7]
On December 13, 2016, the Google Self-Driving Car Project was renamed Waymo and spun out as an independent subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., the holding company that had been created the previous year. The name Waymo is a portmanteau intended to convey "a new way forward in mobility." Larry Page was a key sponsor of the spin-off, viewing autonomous driving as a critical bet for Alphabet alongside other long-horizon investments such as DeepMind, Verily, and Calico.[8]
In mid-2016, Alphabet had hired John Krafcik, former president and CEO of Hyundai Motor America, to run the project as CEO. Krafcik's automotive industry credibility was central to Waymo's transition from a research project into a commercial business with manufacturer relationships and a defined product roadmap.[9]
In early 2017, Waymo brought a high-profile lawsuit against Uber and Otto, the autonomous trucking startup founded by Anthony Levandowski after he left Google in early 2016. The suit alleged that Levandowski had downloaded roughly 14,000 confidential files, including lidar designs, before resigning to start Otto. The case was settled in February 2018, with Uber agreeing to pay Waymo approximately $245 million in equity. Levandowski was later convicted of trade secret theft and was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2021.[10]
In April 2017, Waymo launched its Early Rider program in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, allowing a small group of vetted families to summon free rides in the program's Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans. In December 2018, Waymo turned that pilot into a commercial service called Waymo One, becoming the first company in the world to offer a paid robotaxi ride to the general public. Initially the service still placed a Waymo-trained safety operator behind the wheel and was confined to a defined geofenced area covering Chandler, Tempe, Mesa, and Gilbert. Waymo began offering true rider-only trips, with no human in the driver's seat, to a subset of users in the East Valley of Phoenix in October 2020.[11]
Waymo expanded the supplier base of its fleet during this period. In 2016, the company ordered 100 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans from Stellantis (then Fiat Chrysler), and in 2018 it announced a deal for up to 62,000 more, although fewer than 1,000 were ultimately built. In March 2018, Jaguar Land Rover announced a deal with Waymo for up to 20,000 Jaguar I-PACE all-electric SUVs at an estimated cost of more than $1 billion. The I-PACE became Waymo's primary vehicle platform after the company retired the Pacifica Hybrid fleet in 2023.[12]
In April 2021, John Krafcik stepped down as CEO and was replaced by a co-CEO structure: Tekedra Mawakana, previously chief operating officer, became co-CEO with responsibility for business, and Dmitri Dolgov, the longtime chief technology officer who had been with the project since 2009, became co-CEO with responsibility for technology. Krafcik remained as an advisor. Mawakana had joined Waymo in 2017 from a senior role at Yahoo. Dolgov was a member of the original Stanford DARPA Challenge team and is widely regarded as one of the chief architects of the Waymo Driver software stack.[13]
Waymo began testing in San Francisco as early as 2009, but the dense urban environment, hilly streets, double-parked delivery trucks, and large pedestrian volumes made the city far more challenging than suburban Phoenix. After several years of supervised testing, Waymo opened a Trusted Tester program in San Francisco in August 2021, then launched fully driverless rides for select riders in November 2022. In August 2023, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) granted Waymo and General Motors subsidiary Cruise approval to charge for fully driverless rides at any time of day, anywhere in San Francisco. Waymo opened paid rides to the general public in June 2024 after a year of additional testing.[14]
During the same period, Waymo divested its trucking business. In July 2023, the company announced it would pause most commercial work on Waymo Via, the logistics unit that had been operating Class 8 Freightliner Cascadia trucks under a partnership with Daimler Truck North America first announced in October 2020. Waymo cited the larger near-term commercial opportunity in robotaxi services and refocused engineering resources on Waymo One. The Daimler partnership was preserved at a slower pace.[15]
With Phoenix and San Francisco operating reliably, Waymo entered an aggressive expansion phase. The company began offering rides through the Waymo One app in Los Angeles in November 2024 after running a Tour program earlier in the year. In March 2025, Waymo launched commercial service in Austin, Texas, exclusively through the Uber app, marking its first city where bookings did not flow through the Waymo One app. The company expanded the same Uber-exclusive model to Atlanta in June 2025. By the end of 2025, Waymo was offering more than 450,000 paid rides per week across the five cities, with weekly volume crossing 500,000 by March 2026.[16]
In December 2024, Waymo announced its first international expansion, choosing Tokyo, Japan as its inaugural overseas market. Waymo partnered with Japan's largest taxi operator, Nihon Kotsu, and the GO taxi-hailing app to map seven central wards including Minato, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Chiyoda, Chuo, Shinagawa, and Koto. The early phase used Jaguar I-PACE vehicles operated manually by Nihon Kotsu drivers to collect mapping data, and Waymo held a public preview event in Tokyo on April 10, 2025. Tokyo also marked Waymo's first deployment in a left-hand traffic country.[17]
In October 2024, Waymo closed a $5.6 billion Series C funding round at a $45 billion valuation, with $5 billion committed by Alphabet and additional investment from Andreessen Horowitz, Silver Lake, Fidelity, Tiger Global, Perry Creek, and T. Rowe Price. In February 2026, the company announced a $16 billion follow-on round at a $126 billion post-money valuation, led by Alphabet and joined by the prior backers along with Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Alphabet's GV. The new valuation was approximately 2.8 times the prior round, reflecting the rapid scaling of Waymo One revenue.[18]
The table below summarizes the launch and expansion of Waymo One and related programs since the first Early Rider deployment in Phoenix.
| Year | City or region | Milestone |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Phoenix metro, Arizona | Early Rider program launches with Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans and safety operators |
| 2018 | Phoenix (East Valley) | Waymo One commercial service launches in December, the world's first paid robotaxi service |
| 2020 | Phoenix (East Valley) | Fully rider-only (no safety driver) trips begin in October |
| 2022 | San Francisco, California | Driverless trips begin for Trusted Testers in November |
| 2023 | San Francisco | CPUC approves 24/7 paid driverless service citywide in August; Phoenix area expanded to 180 sq mi |
| 2024 | San Francisco | Public Waymo One paid service opens citywide in June |
| 2024 | Los Angeles, California | Waymo One opens to the public via the Waymo One app in November after Tour program |
| 2024 | Phoenix metro | Coverage expands to 315 square miles, including Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport access |
| 2024 | Tokyo, Japan | Mapping and manual data-collection partnership announced with Nihon Kotsu and GO |
| 2025 | Austin, Texas | Commercial service launches in March, exclusively through the Uber app |
| 2025 | Atlanta, Georgia | Commercial service launches in June, exclusively through the Uber app |
| 2025 | New York City | Manual mapping and supervised testing begins; called the "final boss" of U.S. cities |
| 2025 | Multiple U.S. metros | Mapping or pilot announcements for Dallas, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego, Washington D.C., and others |
| 2026 | Miami, Florida | Public Waymo One service planned via partnership with Moove |
| 2026 | Washington, D.C. | Public Waymo One service planned through Waymo One app |
| 2026 | London, United Kingdom | First European market planned, announced 2025 |
The Waymo Driver is the company's full-stack autonomous driving system. It combines a custom sensor suite, a custom compute platform, perception and prediction neural networks, motion planning software, a vehicle-to-cloud connectivity layer, and a 24/7 fleet response operations center. The Waymo Driver is designed to operate at SAE Level 4 autonomy, meaning it can perform every aspect of dynamic driving within a defined operational design domain without any human input or supervision.[19]
Waymo's full-stack approach contrasts sharply with the camera-only, end-to-end neural network strategy pursued by Tesla for its Full Self-Driving and Robotaxi services. Waymo argues that combining lidar, radar, cameras, and audio sensors provides the redundancy needed for true Level 4 driving, while Tesla and other camera-only systems target Level 2 to Level 3 supervised driving on consumer-owned vehicles. Other competitors, including Mobileye and Amazon-owned Zoox, sit between these extremes: Zoox develops a purpose-built bidirectional electric pod with no steering wheel, and Mobileye supplies SuperVision and Chauffeur driving systems to multiple automakers.[20]
Waymo designs its core sensors in-house, including its lidar, radar, and high-dynamic-range cameras. The decision to build sensors internally dates to 2017, when Waymo moved away from off-the-shelf components for better performance, lower unit cost, and tighter integration with its perception software. Internal lidar costs fell from approximately $75,000 per unit during the early Google project years to roughly $7,500 by 2017.[21]
The in-house lidar family includes long-range surround lidar mounted on the roof and short-range Laser Bear Honeycomb sensors mounted on the perimeter. The Honeycomb sensor offers a 95-degree vertical field of view and a 360-degree horizontal field of view with a minimum range of zero meters and can return up to four returns from a single laser pulse. Waymo briefly sold the Laser Bear Honeycomb to robotics, security, and agricultural customers outside the autonomous-driving industry from March 2019 until August 2021, when it exited that business to refocus on ride-hailing.[22]
The table below summarizes the publicly disclosed generations of the Waymo Driver hardware platform.
| Generation | Year introduced | Vehicle platform | Notable features |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 2009-2012 | Toyota Prius retrofit | Off-the-shelf Velodyne HDL-64E lidar; first DMV-licensed autonomous test vehicle (Nevada, 2012) |
| 2nd | 2012-2015 | Lexus RX 450h retrofit | Improved sensor mast, used for the bulk of early California testing miles |
| 3rd | 2014-2017 | Firefly prototype | First custom-built fully driverless vehicle; no steering wheel or pedals; 25 mph top speed; retired in 2017 |
| 4th | 2017-2020 | Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid | First in-house lidar deployment; first paid Waymo One rides in Phoenix |
| 5th | 2020-2024 | Jaguar I-PACE | All-electric platform; in-house long-range and perimeter lidar with greater than 300 meter range; 29 cameras, 5 lidars, 6 radars; first city-wide driverless deployment in San Francisco |
| 6th | 2024-present | Geely Zeekr RT, Hyundai IONIQ 5 (planned) | 13 cameras (down from 29), 4 lidars (down from 5), 6 radars, external audio receivers; ~40% sensor cost reduction; designed for severe weather; up to 500 m object detection |
Waymo unveiled the 6th-generation Waymo Driver in August 2024 and began fully autonomous operations on the new platform in February 2026. The new sensor suite uses 17-megapixel cameras, fewer total sensors, and improved point-cloud processing that helps the system see through heavy road spray and avoid distortion near reflective signage. The 6th-generation Driver is initially deployed on a Geely Zeekr-built robotaxi platform and will eventually be the basis for the Hyundai IONIQ 5 robotaxis.[23]
The Waymo Driver runs on a custom in-vehicle compute platform that has been redesigned across each generation. The 5th-generation system used custom silicon and high-performance accelerators to handle perception, prediction, and planning in real time. The 6th-generation compute platform is more energy-efficient and lower-cost, allowing Waymo to deploy more vehicles per dollar of capital spending.[24]
The software stack uses a layered architecture. Perception modules fuse lidar, radar, camera, and audio data into a coherent representation of nearby road users and infrastructure. Prediction modules forecast trajectories of pedestrians, cyclists, and other vehicles. A behavior planner selects high-level driving goals such as lane changes or unprotected left turns, and a motion planner generates a smooth trajectory that is executed by low-level control software. Waymo trains many components on real-world driving data and on simulated scenarios generated by its Carcraft simulation environment, which can run billions of variations of rare events.[25]
Waymo has also published research describing its end-to-end multimodal models, including the Waymo Foundation Model, a large transformer that combines raw sensor inputs and high-level driving context. Foundation-model approaches at Waymo are paired with the modular planner rather than replacing it, preserving the safety guarantees of the modular pipeline.[26]
Waymo does not manufacture vehicles. Instead, it partners with established automakers and contract manufacturers to integrate the Waymo Driver into purpose-built or modified vehicles, and it partners with ride-hailing platforms and local taxi operators in some markets. The table below summarizes the major active partnerships.
| Partner | Type | Role | First announced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler) | Automaker | Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans for first commercial fleet (retired 2023) | 2016 |
| Jaguar Land Rover | Automaker | All-electric Jaguar I-PACE SUVs as primary 5th-gen fleet | 2018 |
| Magna International | Contract manufacturer | Vehicle integration and assembly at Mesa, Arizona facility | 2024 |
| Geely Zeekr | Automaker | Custom 6th-generation Zeekr RT robotaxi platform | 2021 (Zeekr brand), 2024 (RT debut) |
| Hyundai Motor | Automaker | IONIQ 5 EVs for the Waymo One fleet, assembled at Hyundai's Metaplant America in Georgia | 2024 |
| Daimler Truck North America | Truck OEM | Autonomous Class 8 Freightliner Cascadia platform (slowed in 2023) | 2020 |
| Uber | Ride-hailing platform | Exclusive booking partner in Austin and Atlanta | 2024 |
| Nihon Kotsu and GO | Taxi operator and app | Tokyo mapping, vehicle servicing, and pilot operations | 2024 |
| Moove | Mobility services | Fleet operations partner for Miami launch | 2025 |
| Avis Budget Group | Fleet management | Fleet maintenance services in Phoenix | 2021 |
The Hyundai partnership, announced in October 2024, is among the most strategically important. The IONIQ 5 vehicles are assembled at Hyundai Motor Group's Metaplant America EV plant in Bryan County, Georgia, and then equipped with the 6th-generation Waymo Driver. Reporting in early 2026 indicated that Hyundai expected to allocate approximately 50,000 IONIQ 5 vehicles to the Waymo fleet over the contract. The first Hyundai robotaxis began on-road testing in late 2025.[27]
The Magna partnership, announced in 2024, gave Waymo a dedicated assembly plant in Mesa, Arizona where Magna retrofits vehicles with the Waymo Driver. Magna had previously worked with Waymo on the Jaguar I-PACE program. The Mesa facility scales Waymo's vehicle output without the company building its own factory.[28]
Riders summon Waymo vehicles through the Waymo One smartphone app or, in Austin and Atlanta, through the Uber app. The vehicle arrives without a human driver, and the rider unlocks and enters using the app. The in-vehicle experience includes a touchscreen for trip controls, lighting that responds to the rider's presence, and a Rider Support button that connects to a live human agent who can answer questions or stop the vehicle if needed. Waymo operates a 24-hour fleet response and remote assistance team that can provide guidance to vehicles encountering ambiguous situations, although the remote agents do not directly drive the cars.[29]
Waymo runs depot facilities in each operational city where vehicles are charged, cleaned, inspected, and dispatched. Depots include calibration bays for sensor alignment. The all-electric Jaguar I-PACE fleet is charged at depot DC fast chargers between trips.[30]
Waymo One operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in most commercial markets, including 24/7 freeway operations that began rolling out in select cities in 2024 and 2025. The 6th-generation Waymo Driver was designed to expand the operational design domain into more challenging weather, including heavy rain.[31]
Waymo publishes a public Safety Hub that aggregates miles driven, crash counts, and comparison benchmarks against human drivers. Crash data are reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) under the Standing General Order on Crash Reporting that NHTSA issued in 2021.[32]
Key safety metrics published by Waymo as of late 2025 and early 2026 include:
Waymo has been the subject of NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation actions, including reviews of incidents in which vehicles drove into oncoming lanes, struck stationary objects, or violated traffic controls. Waymo has issued voluntary software recalls in response and has shipped over-the-air updates that the company says have resolved the underlying behaviors.[34]
Waymo's revenue is reported within the Other Bets segment of Alphabet's annual Form 10-K filings, which combines Waymo with smaller Alphabet projects such as Verily and X. The segment's revenue and operating loss have grown alongside Waymo's ride volume, but Alphabet does not break out Waymo's individual financials. Investors and analysts estimate Waymo unit economics from public data, including disclosed weekly trip counts and reported average ride prices that are broadly competitive with Uber and Lyft in the same cities.[35]
Waymo's main competitors in the commercial robotaxi market include:
Industry observers consistently rank Waymo as the global leader in commercialized fully driverless ride-hailing measured by paid trip volume, weekly active riders, and number of cities operating with no human in the driver's seat.[36]
Waymo operates under a patchwork of state and city regulators in the United States. In California, the Department of Motor Vehicles licenses autonomous testing and deployment, while the California Public Utilities Commission separately authorizes paid passenger service. In Arizona, the Department of Transportation has taken a comparatively light-touch approach that accelerated Waymo's early commercial launch in Phoenix. Texas state law preempts most municipal regulation, which has supported launches in Austin and planned launches in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio.[37]
New York City has been a notable holdout. State law has historically required a human driver behind the wheel of any vehicle on public roads. Waymo began supervised testing in Manhattan in 2025 under a special permit and has lobbied state lawmakers for changes that would permit fully driverless operations. International expansion to Tokyo and London is subject to country-specific approvals, and Waymo has structured its early Tokyo program as a mapping and data-collection partnership rather than a paid service.[38]
Waymo has had three CEO regimes since the spin-off:
Key technology leaders historically associated with Waymo include Sebastian Thrun (Google Self-Driving Car Project founder), Anthony Levandowski (early hardware lead), Mike Montemerlo (perception and SLAM), and Drago Anguelov (head of research as of 2026).[39]
Waymo has been credited with normalizing the experience of riding in a fully driverless vehicle in the United States. By 2025, riders in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta could routinely watch a steering wheel turn itself for an entire trip, an experience confined to research demonstrations as recently as 2018. The company has also spurred public debate over labor implications for ride-hailing drivers, urban congestion, municipal regulation, the privacy implications of always-on cameras, and emergency response protocols when an autonomous vehicle becomes part of an incident scene.[40]
Independent research papers and industry reports have used Waymo's published mileage and crash data to argue that mature autonomous driving systems can already be safer than the average human driver. Critics caution that Waymo's operational design domain is narrower than human drivers and that comparisons must control for road type, time of day, and weather.[41]