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Waymo’s acceleration over the past 18 months is undeniable. The Alphabet-owned self-driving company now operates commercial robotaxi services in six markets, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, and Miami. It has plans to grow its fleet of driverless taxicabs this year to more than a dozen new cities internationally, including London and Tokyo.
And now it has $16 billion to fuel that expansion. Is it enough?
Talking to a few industry watchers, the answer kept landing in the squishy “sort of” and “it depends” territory.
First the bull case. Alphabet is clearly committed to ensuring Waymo’s success; the parent company is, and continues to be, the primary investor. Which means Waymo isn’t exposed like other AV startups that suddenly lost funding after their backers (often legacy automakers) got skittish or pivoted.
Its ridership and autonomous miles driven stats are also exploding and will likely continue in that trajectory unless it is derailed by regulators. (Waymo provides 400,000 rides every week across six major U.S. metropolitan areas, and in 2025 alone, it more than tripled its annual volume to 15 million rides.)
This doesn’t guarantee success, though, especially if the gauge is set to profitability. Waymo still must solve several problems, including cost and increasing attention from regulators (the company’s chief safety officer just testified in a Senate Commerce hearing). If Waymo wants to simply be the licensor of its AV tech, it will have to move away from being the operator, which means giving up some control. That’s hard with a nascent technology under scrutiny.
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And while some of you will fight me on this, it also lacks the in-house manufacturing that Tesla has. Yes, Waym …