Artificial Intelligence · Profile from AI Research Companion
Waymo
Alphabet's self-driving company. It began in January 2009 as Google's self-driving car project and was spun out under its own name in December 2016. It is the only Western company that runs fully driverless, paid robotaxi service at scale. Waymo spent most of its first decade as a symbol of the self-driving overpromise: its timelines slipped, its valuation was marked down from a sell-side ~$175bn (2018) to ~$30bn (2020, reported) and its trucking unit was paused. It became the trough's survivor. It carried ~15m paid rides in 2025 (company), passed 400,000 paid rides a week in early 2026 (company) and raised $16bn at a $126bn post-money valuation in February 2026 (company). Its business turns a learned driving system (the "Waymo Driver"), trained and validated on hundreds of millions of autonomous miles, into a per-ride fare. The open questions in late 2026 are cost per mile, the pace of the city-by-city roll-out, and how long regulators and the public will accept incidents that a human driver would also have had.
At a glance
- Founded
- January 2009 as Google's self-driving car project ("Project Chauffeur"), led by Sebastian Thrun with Chris Urmson, Anthony Levandowski and others; renamed Waymo LLC and moved into Alphabet's Other Bets on 13 December 2016
- Headquarters
- Mountain View, California; operations depots in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, Miami and other launch cities; testing in London and Tokyo
- Ownership / structure
- Subsidiary of Alphabet, reported inside the Other Bets segment; Alphabet is the majority owner; outside minority investors since 2020 include Silver Lake, Mubadala, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, Tiger Global, Magna, AutoNation and, in 2026, Dragoneer, DST Global and Sequoia (reported)
- Leadership (2026)
- Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov, co-CEOs since April 2021; John Krafcik was CEO from September 2015 to April 2021
- AI products
- The Waymo Driver (sensors, compute and the learned driving software); Waymo One ride-hailing app; Waymo on the Uber app in Phoenix (2023), Austin (March 2025) and Atlanta (June 2025); research on end-to-end and foundation models for driving (EMMA paper, October 2024)
- Vehicles
- Chrysler Pacifica minivans (2017–); Jaguar I-PACE (fifth-generation Driver, main fleet from 2020); Zeekr-built purpose-designed vehicle for the sixth-generation Driver (later named Ojai, reported); Hyundai Ioniq 5 (agreed October 2024); Toyota preliminary partnership (April 2025); fitting in Magna's Mesa, Arizona plant (2025)
- Scale
- Fully driverless public service in Phoenix from October 2020; ~15m paid rides in 2025 (company); 400,000+ paid rides a week across six US metros (company, February 2026); ~500,000 a week at Q1 2026 results (CNBC via coverage, re-checked Nov 2026); target of 1m paid rides a week by end-2026 (company); ~15 US cities by September 2026 (Electrek, reported; counts vary by definition)
- Capital raised
- $2.25bn first outside round (March 2020), extended to $3.2bn (May 2020); $2.5bn (June 2021); $5.6bn led by Alphabet at >$45bn (October 2024); $16bn at $126bn post-money led by Dragoneer, DST Global and Sequoia (February 2026). Alphabet also pledged ~$5bn of further funding over several years (July 2024, reported). Debt: $5.0bn senior secured term loan, October 2026, to 2032, not guaranteed by Alphabet (Alphabet 10-Q)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- The Google project (2009); the spin-out and the Uber trade-secrets suit (2016–18); Waymo One in Phoenix (2018); the first outside round and the valuation reset (2020); the trucking pause (2023); paid driverless service in San Francisco and the Cruise contrast (2023); Uber and the fleet partners (2025); the recalls and school-bus scrutiny (2024–26); the $16bn round and the million-ride push (2026)
9 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2009
Google Self Driving Project
Founding (internal project)
2016
Waymo Spin Out and the Uber Trade Secrets Suit
Restructuring / lawsuit or settlement
2018
Waymo One Phoenix Launch
Launch
2020
First Outside Round and the Valuation Reset
Funding round
2023
San Francisco Paid Driverless and the Cruise Contrast
Regulatory action / launch
2023
Waymo Via Trucking Pause
Shutdown (pause) of a business line — failure
2025
Recalls and the School Bus Scrutiny
Regulatory action — failure and response
2025
Uber Austin Atlanta and the Fleet Partners
Partnership
2026
16bn Round and the Million Ride Push
Funding round / expansion