Waymo

Waymo LLC ( WAY-moh) is an American autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company. As of June 2026, Waymo operates public commercial robotaxi services in 10 US metropolitan areas, has 3,871 robotaxis in service, provides 500,000 paid rides per week, and has logged 200 million fully autonomous miles. The company traces its origins to the Stanford University 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. Co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov have run Waymo 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 (NTSB) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) 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.