WAYMO

Started as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, led by Sebastian Thrun, who won the DARPA Grand Challenge. Google gave the project essentially unlimited funding.

The team built their own sensors, maps, and software from scratch. In 2016, Alphabet spun the project out as Waymo.

They spent years testing in Arizona, building up millions of autonomous miles before launching Waymo One to the public in Phoenix in 2020.

Waymo operates a robotaxi service called Waymo One — fully autonomous rides in select US cities, no human driver. Riders hail via an app, get picked up by a self-driving Jaguar I-PACE or Zeekr vehicle, and pay per ride.

The model is identical to Uber/Lyft except the most expensive part — the human driver — does not exist. They also license autonomous driving technology for trucking and logistics.

The entire play is that removing the driver flips ride-hailing unit economics from terrible to incredible.

Waymo One (public robotaxi service), Waymo Via (autonomous trucking), Waymo Driver (core self-driving technology platform)

City-by-city expansion. Launched in Phoenix, expanded to San Francisco, then Los Angeles, rolling into Austin and Atlanta.

Partnering with Uber to put Waymo vehicles on the Uber platform — instant demand without building their own consumer brand from scratch. The trucking play targets long-haul interstate routes where the business case is even stronger.

The technology works — that is not the hard part anymore. The hard part is scaling to every city without going broke.

Each new city requires extensive mapping, local regulatory approval, and infrastructure. Weather remains harder for sensors than sunshine.

Public trust is another battle — every fender-bender makes national news even when the car was not at fault. And the sensor suite cost per vehicle needs to come down dramatically for mass-scale economics.

Alphabet (parent company), Silver Lake, Tiger Global, Andreessen Horowitz, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Magna International