Waymo LLC ( ) is an American autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company. , Waymo operates public commercial robotaxi services in 10 US metropolitan areas, has 3,000 robotaxis in service, provides 500,000 paid rides per week and had logged 200 million fully autonomous miles.
The company traces its origins to the Stanford Racing Team, which competed in the 2005 and 2007 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenges. Google's development of self-driving technology began in January 2009 and the project was revealed in October 2010. In December 2016, the project was renamed Waymo and spun out of Google as part of Alphabet. In October 2020, Waymo became the first company to offer service to the public without safety drivers.
Waymo is run by co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov since April 2021. The company raised $11 billion in multiple outside funding rounds by 2024. In February 2026, Waymo raised $16 billion, which valued the company at $126 billion.
In January 2026, The National Transportation Safety Board and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened investigations into Waymo's robotaxis for recurring incidents of illegally passing stopped school buses, and one incident where a robotaxi hit a child who ran out from behind a parked SUV in a school zone.
Google's development of self-driving technology began on January 17, 2009, at Google X lab, run by co-founder Sergey Brin. The project was launched at Google by Sebastian Thrun, the former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) and Anthony Levandowski, founder of 510 Systems and Anthony's Robots.
The initial software code and artificial intelligence (AI) design of the effort started before the team worked at Google, when Thrun and 15 engineers, including Dmitri Dolgov, Mike Montemerlo, Hendrik Dahlkamp, Sven Strohband, and David Stavens, built Stanley and Junior, Stanford's entries in the 2005 and 2007 DARPA Challenges. Later, aspects of this technology were used in a digital mapping project for SAIL called VuTool. In 2007, Google acqui-hired the entire VuTool team to help advance Google's Street View technology.
As part of Street View development, 100 Toyota Priuses were outfitted with Topcon digital mapping hardware developed by 510 Systems.
In 2008, the Street View team launched project Ground Truth, to create accurate road maps by extracting data from satellites and street views.
In February 2008, a Discovery Channel producer for the documentary series Prototype This! phoned Levandowski. The producer requested to borrow Levandowski's Ghost Rider, the autonomous two-wheeled motorcycle Levandowski's Berkeley team had built for the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge that Levandowski had later donated to the Smithsonian. Since the motorcycle was not available, Levandowski offered to retrofit a Toyota Prius as a self-driving pizza delivery car for the show.
As a Google employee, Levandowski asked Larry Page and Thrun whether Google was interested in participating in the show. Both declined, citing liability issues. However, they authorized Levandowski to move forward with the project, as long as it was not associated with Google. Within weeks Levandowski founded Anthony's Robots to do so. He retrofitted the car with light detection and ranging technology (lidar), sensors, and cameras. The Stanford team behind the Stanley car provided its code base to the project. The ensuing episode depicting Pribot delivering pizza across the San Francisco Bay Bridge under police escort aired in December 2008.
The project success led Google to greenlight Google's self-driving car program in January 2009. In 2011, Google acquired 510 Systems (co-founded by Levandowski, Pierre-Yves Droz and Andrew Schultz), and Anthony's Robots for an estimated US$20 million. Levandowski's vehicle and hardware, and Stanford's AI technology and software, became the nucleus of the project.
After almost two years of road testing with seven vehicles, the New York Times revealed the existence of Google's project on October 9, 2010. Google announced its initiative later the same day.
Starting in 2010, lawmakers in various states expressed concerns over how to regulate autonomous vehicles. A related Nevada law went into effect on March 1, 2012. Google had been lobbying for such laws. A modified Prius was licensed by the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in May 2012. The car was "driven" by Chris Urmson with Levandowski in the passenger seat. This was the first US license for a self-driven car.
In January 2014 Google was granted a patent for a transportation service funded by advertising that included autonomous vehicles as a transport method. In late May, Google revealed an autonomous prototype, which had no steering wheel, gas pedal, or brake pedal. In December, Google unveiled a Firefly prototype that was planned to be tested on San Francisco Bay Area roads beginning in early 2015. In 2015, Levandowski left the project. In August 2015, Google hired former Hyundai Motor executive, John Krafcik, as CEO. In fall 2015, Google for the first time to non-employees provided a ride in a fully autonomous vehicle in Austin, Texas. The passenger was a blind man. It was the first entirely autonomous trip on a public road. It was not accompanied by a test driver or police escort. The car had no steering wheel or floor pedals. By the end of 2015, Project Chauffeur had covered more than a million miles.
Google spent $1.1 billion on the project between 2009 and 2015. For comparison, the acquisition of Cruise Automation by General Motors in March 2016 was for $500 million, and Uber's acquisition of Otto in August 2016 was for $680 million.
In May 2016, Google and Stellantis announced an order of 100 Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans to test the self-driving technology. In December 2016, the project changed its name to Waymo and spun out of Google as part of Alphabet. The name was derived from "a new way forward in mobility". In May 2016, the company opened a technology center in Novi, Michigan.
In February 2017, Waymo sued Uber and its subsidiary self-driving trucking company, Otto, alleging trade secret theft and patent infringement. The company claimed that three ex-Google employees, including Anthony Levandowski, had stolen trade secrets, including thousands of files, from Google before joining Uber. The alleged infringement was related to Waymo's proprietary lidar technology, Google accused Uber of colluding with Levandowski. Levandowski allegedly downloaded 9 gigabytes of data that included over a hundred trade secrets; eight of which were at stake during the trial. An ensuing settlement gave Waymo 0.34% of Uber stock, the equivalent of $245 million. Uber agreed not to infringe Waymo's intellectual property. Part of the agreement included a guarantee that "Waymo confidential information is not being incorporated in Uber Advanced Technologies Group hardware and software." In statements released after the settlement, Uber maintained that it received no trade secrets. In May, according to an Uber spokesman, Uber had fired Levandowski, which resulted in the loss of roughly $250 million of his equity in Uber, which almost exactly equaled the settlement. Uber announced that it was halting production of self-driving trucks through Otto in July 2018, and the subsidiary company was shuttered. In 2020, Levandowski pled guilty to one of 33 charges, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Waymo began testing minivans without a safety driver on public roads in Chandler, Arizona, in October 2017. In 2017, Waymo unveiled new sensors and chips that are less expensive to manufacture, cameras that improve visibility, and wipers to clear the lidar system. At the beginning of the self-driving car program, they used a $75,000 lidar system from Velodyne. In 2017, the cost decreased approximately 90 percent, as Waymo converted to in-house built lidar. Waymo has applied its technology to various cars including the Prius, Audi TT, Chrysler Pacifica, and Lexus RX450h. Waymo partners with Lyft on pilot projects and product development.
Waymo started testing in Phoenix without safety drivers in November 2017.
In March 2018, Jaguar Land Rover announced that Waymo had ordered up to 20,000 of its I-Pace electric SUVs at an estimated cost of more than $1 billion. In late May 2018, Alphabet announced plans to add up to 62,000 Pacifica Hybrid minivans to the fleet. Also in May 2018, Waymo established Huimo Business Consulting subsidiary in Shanghai.
In October 2018, the California Department of Motor Vehicles issued a permit for Waymo to operate cars without safety drivers. Waymo was the first company to receive a permit for day and night testing on public roads and highways. Waymo announced that its service would include Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, and Palo Alto. In July 2019, Waymo received permission to transport passengers.
In December 2018, Waymo launched Waymo One in Phoenix, transporting passengers. The service used safety drivers to monitor some rides, with others provided in select areas without them. In November 2019, Waymo One became the first autonomous service worldwide to operate without safety drivers. Waymo One launched in San Francisco, beginning with a "trusted tester" rollout. In March 2022, Waymo began offering rides for Waymo staff in San Francisco without a safety driver.
In April 2019, Waymo announced plans for vehicle assembly in Detroit at the former American Axle & Manufacturing plant, bringing between 100 and 400 jobs to the area. Waymo used vehicle assembler Magna to turn Jaguar I-PACE electric SUVs and Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans into Waymo Level 4 autonomous vehicles. Waymo subsequently reverted to retrofitting existing models rather than a custom design.
In March 2020, Waymo Via was launched after the company's announcement that it had raised $2.25 billion from investors. In May 2020, Waymo raised an additional $750 million. In July 2020, the company announced an exclusive partnership with auto manufacturer Volvo to integrate Waymo technology.
In April 2021, Krafcik was replaced by two co-CEOs: Waymo's COO Tekedra Mawakana and CTO Dmitri Dolgov. Mawakana is responsible for business operations, and Dolgov is responsible for the company's technology. Waymo raised $2.5 billion in another funding round in June 2021, with total funding of $5.5 billion. Waymo launched a consumer testing program in San Francisco in August 2021.
In May 2022, Waymo started a pilot program seeking riders in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. In May 2022, Waymo announced that it would expand the program to more areas of Phoenix. In 2023, coverage of the Waymo One area was increased by , expanding to include downtown Mesa, uptown Phoenix, and South Mountain Village.
In June 2022, Waymo announced a partnership with Uber, under which Waymo will integrate its autonomous technology into Uber's freight truck service. Plans to expand the program to Los Angeles were announced in late 2022. On December 13, 2022, Waymo applied for the final permit necessary to operate fully autonomous taxis, without a backup driver present, within the state of California.
In January 2023, The Information reported that Waymo staff were among those affected by Google's layoffs of around 12,000 workers. TechCrunch reported that Waymo was set to kill its trucking program.
In July 2024, Waymo began testing its sixth-generation robotaxis which are based on electric vehicles by Chinese automobile company Zeekr, developed in a partnership first announced in 2021. They were anticipated to reduce costs, at a time when Waymo was operating at a loss.
In October 2024, Waymo closed a $5.6 billion funding round led by Alphabet, aimed at expanding its robotaxi services, bringing its total capital to over $11 billion. Around that time, the New York Times described Waymo as being "far ahead of the competition", in particular after Cruise had to suspend its operations after an accident in 2023.
Also in November 2025, the permit area in Northern California was expanded to include Santa Rosa and Sacramento. The Southern California permit area was expanded to stretch from the Mexican border to Ventura County. These new permit areas were approved by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The permit area of the DMV is larger than the operating area. The operating area is slated to get expanded to cover San Diego in mid-2026.
In February 2026, Waymo raised a $16 billion funding round that valued the company at $126 billion, to fund further expansion into new markets. Bloomberg reported that $13 billion of that came from Alphabet.
Waymo regularly lobbies public officials and regulators throughout US cities and states, to encourage updates to laws so self-driving vehicles can operate in those locations. In 2024, Waymo spent $1.7 million on lobbying in the US. In the state of New York, Waymo has spent $1.8 million since 2019 on lobbying efforts, .
In February 2026, Waymo company representatives spoke to the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and requested that the federal government create uniform nationwide standards for autonomous vehicle deployment. The company stated that unless the US reduces regulations that hamper innovation, US companies will lose the trillion dollar global autonomous vehicle market to Chinese companies.
In 2017, Waymo highlighted four business uses for its autonomous technology: robotaxis; trucking and logistics; urban public transportation; and passenger cars. As of 2023, trucking is no longer a focus.
Waymo currently serves select cities in the United States, and has announced expansion into Japan and the United Kingdom.
The service is accessed in most locations by using the Waymo iOS app or Android app; Waymo service in Austin and Atlanta is available by using the Uber app. Once a Waymo vehicle arrives, riders push a button to "start ride", and have optional "help", "lock", and "pull over" buttons. Rides usually complete without riders pressing any optional buttons. The car's steering wheel turns as the car makes turns, and a passenger may sit in the right-front passenger seat, but not in the driver's seat. Some information gathered by the car's sensors is displayed on a screen.
, Waymo has 3,000 robotaxis in service, provides 500,000 paid rides per week, and drives 4 million rider-only miles per week.
Other potential expansion:
In September 2025, Waymo and the city of Chandler, Arizona announced that Waymo would be integrated into Chandler's public microtransit service.
In 2020 Waymo launched a self-driving truck development division designated as Waymo Via, to work with OEMs to integrate its technology into commercial vehicles. The company began testing Class 8 tractor-trailers in 2018 in Atlanta, expanding in 2019 to southwest shipping routes across Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. The company opened a trucking hub in Dallas, Texas in 2021. It partnered with Daimler to integrate autonomous technology into a fleet of Freightliner Cascadia trucks. Waymo operated 48 Class 8 autonomous trucks with safety drivers.
Waymo tested its technology in commercial delivery vehicles with United Parcel Service. In July 2020 Waymo and Stellantis expanded their partnership, including the development of Ram ProMaster delivery vehicles.
In July 2023, Waymo announced that it was moving away from commercial development of self-driving trucks to focus on the ride-hailing Waymo business, and shuttered the Waymo Via trucking program. The vast majority of employees who were on Waymo's trucking team moved to other roles within the company.
Waymo has partnered with Uber Eats and DoorDash to deliver food.
Google has invested heavily in matrix multiplication and video processing hardware such as the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) to augment Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) and Intel's central processing units (CPUs) used in Waymo vehicles.
Waymo manufactures a suite of self-driving hardware developed in-house. This includes sensors and hardware-enhanced vision system, lidar, and radar. Sensors give 360-degree views while lidar detects objects up to away. Short-range lidar images objects near the vehicle, and radar is used to see around other vehicles and track objects in motion.
Waymo uses a deep-learning architecture called VectorNet to predict vehicle trajectories in complex traffic scenarios. It uses a graph neural network to model the interactions between vehicles and has demonstrated state-of-the-art performance on several benchmark datasets for trajectory prediction.
Waymo Carcraft is a virtual world in which Waymo simulates driving conditions. The simulator was named after the video game World of Warcraft. With Carcraft, 25,000 virtual self-driving cars navigate through models of Austin, Texas; Mountain View, California; Phoenix, Arizona; and other cities.
, most of Waymo's robotaxis are customized Jaguar I-Pace cars. Waymo plans to introduce Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Zeekr Ojai cars.
, Morgan Stanley estimated the total vehicle cost at over $120,000, and another source estimated $150,000. , another source estimates it to be above $100,000. Other costs include ride monitors, service personnel, and real estate for storing and servicing the vehicles.
In February 2026, Waymo's chief safety officer confirmed that the company employs remote assistance workers in the United States and the Philippines to address situations that the vehicles cannot independently solve. The company stated that the remote workers do not drive the vehicles, simply providing guidance to the vehicle, which can accept or reject it.
From California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) data, , Waymo delivered 4.75 million Passenger Miles Traveled (PMT) monthly, which required 6.57 million Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT). This is a three-fold growth from September 2024 in both PMT and VMT, with the ratio staying roughly equal.
Vehicles have an average passenger occupancy of 0.75. In 70% of the trips, only one passenger is in the car. For 44% of miles, the vehicle is empty, and 4.6% of requested trips are cancelled.
In 2024, Waymo and insurance company Swiss Re published a study which estimated that Waymo generated 92% fewer bodily injury claims and 88% fewer property damage claims than human drivers over the same number of miles in the same locations. The study said that by the end of 2024, the company was facing two potential bodily injury claims (accidents where the Waymo vehicle was potentially at fault), and estimated that human drivers would have generated 26 bodily injury claims. For property damage claims, Waymo logged nine versus an estimated 78 for human drivers. Experts noted that the sample size in the study of 25 million miles driven is extremely small (0.0008%), compared to the 3 trillion miles logged annually by human drivers in the US.
In July 2021, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) started requiring autonomous vehicle companies to report any accidents which result in injury or property damage that occur within 30 seconds of the vehicle operating in autonomous mode. , the (NHTSA) has logged 1,710 accidents (cumulative since July 2021), involving Waymo vehicles. From July 2021 to January 2025, Waymo's vehicles have been involved in about 30 accidents with injuries, though the NHTSA reports do not ascribe fault.
Some examples of Waymo accidents:
In September 2025, a Waymo in Atlanta was recorded illegally passing a stopped school bus. Georgia State Representative Clint Crowe and State Senator Rick Williams criticized Waymo, with Williams stating his support for higher fines for self-driving cars.
In 2018, after the death of Elaine Herzberg â the first recorded case of a pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving car (an Uber test vehicle) â there were several cases of Waymo cars being vandalized.
In 2023, the San Francisco group Safe Street Rebel used a practice called "coning" to trap Waymo and Cruise cars with traffic cones as a form of protest after stating that the cars had been involved in hundreds of incidents.
In February 2024, during Lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatown, San Francisco, a mob of vandals attacked, graffitied, and set fire to a Waymo car. No one was injured.
In February 2024, a pair of Waymo passengers described an attack by an onlooker who attempted to cover the car's sensors.
In July 2024, Waymo sued two people who allegedly vandalized their cars.
During the June 2025 Los Angeles protests against mass deportation, several Waymo cars were set on fire when riots broke out. Officials including California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass condemned the destruction, attributing it to extremists infiltrating otherwise-peaceful protests.
Waymo has been criticized for the use of its camera footage by law enforcement agencies. According to Waymo, it "does not provide information or data to law enforcement without a valid legal request".