Waymo

Waymo LLC
Company typeSubsidiary
IndustryAutonomous cars
PredecessorGoogle Self-Driving Car Project
Founded
  • 2004 (2004) (as Stanford Self-Driving Car Team)
  • January 17, 2009 (January 17, 2009) (as the Google Self-Driving Car Project)
  • December 13, 2016 (2016-12-13) (as Waymo)
Founder
  • Sebastian Thrun
  • Anthony Levandowski
Headquarters
Mountain View, California
,
United States
Area served
Key people
  • Dmitri Dolgov (co-CEO)
  • Tekedra Mawakana (co-CEO)
Number of employees
2,500 (2025)[1]
Parent
Websitewaymo.com

Waymo LLC, formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, 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 commercial robotaxi services available to the public in Phoenix (Arizona), San Francisco (California), Los Angeles (California),[2] Atlanta (Georgia), and Austin (Texas).[3] Waymo services are available to select passengers on a waitlist in Silicon Valley (California).[4] As of April 2025, it offers over 250,000 paid rides per week, totalling over 1 million miles monthly.[5][6]

Waymo has announced that their services will be expanding in 2026 to more U.S. cities: Dallas (Texas), Miami (Florida),[7] Washington, D.C., and Nashville (Tennessee).[8] Other cities where Waymo has announced interest in eventually opening service include New York City,[9] Seattle,[10] and Denver.[11] Waymo is testing the service in Tokyo, Japan in its first international expansion.[12] City mapping in preparation for potential new services has taken place in various cities in the United States including, Boston, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Philadelphia,[13] San Diego, Orlando, Houston, and San Antonio.[14]

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.[15] Google's development of self-driving technology began in January 2009,[16][17] led by Sebastian Thrun, the former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), and Anthony Levandowski, founder of 510 Systems and Anthony's Robots.[18][19] After almost two years of road testing, the project was revealed in October 2010.[20][21][22] In fall 2015, Google provided "the world's first fully driverless ride on public roads".[23] In December 2016, the project was renamed Waymo and spun out of Google as part of Alphabet.[24] In October 2020, Waymo became the first company to offer service to the public without safety drivers in the vehicle.[25][26][27][28]

Waymo is run by co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov.[29] The company raised US$5.5 billion in multiple outside funding rounds[30] by 2022 and raised $5.6 billion funding in 2024.[31] Waymo has or had partnerships with multiple vehicle manufacturers, including Stellantis,[32] Mercedes-Benz Group AG,[33] Jaguar Land Rover,[34] and Volvo Cars.[35]

  1. ^ Chow, Andrew R. (June 26, 2025). "Waymo's Self-Driving Future Is Here". Time. Retrieved August 13, 2025.
  2. ^ Knoll, Corina (March 20, 2024). "When Nobody Is Behind the Wheel in Car-Obsessed Los Angeles". The New York Times. Retrieved July 23, 2024.
  3. ^ Muller, Joann (March 4, 2025). "Waymo autonomous vehicles launch on Uber network in Austin". Axios.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference sv-expansion-202506 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Love, Julia (March 17, 2025). "Alphabet's Waymo to Offer Self-Driving Rides in Silicon Valley". Bloomberg. Retrieved March 13, 2025.
  6. ^ Korosec, Kirsten (February 27, 2025). "Waymo has doubled its weekly robotaxi rides in less than a year". TechCrunch. Retrieved March 14, 2025.
  7. ^ "WAYMO IN MIAMI: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SELF-DRIVING CARS IN THE MAGIC CITY". The Elser Hotel. April 3, 2025. Archived from the original on April 24, 2025. Retrieved April 24, 2025.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference nashville was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Elias, Jennifer (June 18, 2025). "Waymo cars are coming to New York, but with a driver behind the wheel". CNBC. Archived from the original on June 18, 2025. Retrieved June 18, 2025.
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference waypoint-seattle was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference waypoint-denver was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference TokyoWaymo was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. ^ Elias, Jennifer (July 7, 2025). "Waymo to begin testing in Philadelphia with safety drivers behind the wheel". CNBC. Retrieved July 8, 2025.
  14. ^ Cohen, Ben (May 30, 2025). "It's Waymo's World. We're All Just Riding in It". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on May 31, 2025. Retrieved May 31, 2025.
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference :10 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  16. ^ Cite error: The named reference AP-16 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ Cite error: The named reference :2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  18. ^ Cite error: The named reference :7 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference :3 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYT2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  21. ^ Cite error: The named reference Google was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  22. ^ Cite error: The named reference tc-levandowski was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  23. ^ Cite error: The named reference :16 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  24. ^ Cite error: The named reference journey was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  25. ^ "Waymo launches its first commercial self-driving car service". Engadget. Retrieved December 5, 2018.
  26. ^ White, Joseph (October 8, 2020). "Waymo opens driverless robo-taxi service to the public in Phoenix". Reuters. Retrieved October 20, 2020.
  27. ^ "Waymo Relaunches Driverless Ride Sharing". All About Arizona News. October 12, 2020. Retrieved October 18, 2020.
  28. ^ Hawkins, Andrew J. (December 9, 2019). "Waymo's driverless car: ghost-riding in the back seat of a robot taxi". The Verge.
  29. ^ "Waymo CEO John Krafcik steps aside as co-CEO's take over". CNBC. April 2, 2021. Retrieved April 2, 2021.
  30. ^ Cite error: The named reference cnbc-may22 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  31. ^ Kolodny, Lora (October 25, 2024). "Alphabet's self-driving unit Waymo closes $5.6 billion funding round as robotaxi race heats up in the U.S." CNBC. Retrieved October 30, 2024.
  32. ^ Andrew J. Hawkins (November 7, 2017). "Waymo is first to put fully self-driving cars on US roads without a safety driver". The Verge. Retrieved June 13, 2018.
  33. ^ Daimler Trucks partners with Waymo to build self-driving semi trucks, TechCrunch, October 27, 2020
  34. ^ Bergen, Mark; Naughton, Keith (April 2, 2018). "Waymo isn't going to slow down now". Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved June 12, 2018.
  35. ^ Cite error: The named reference :12 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.