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 had 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. 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.
Origins and Groundwork
Google's self-driving car effort began on January 17, 2009, at Google X lab, run by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The project was launched by Sebastian Thrun, former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), and Anthony Levandowski, founder of 510 Systems and Anthony's Robots. The initial software and artificial intelligence design drew on work from Thrun and 15 engineers, including Dmitri Dolgov, Mike Montemerlo, Hendrik Dahlkamp, Sven Strohband, and David Stavens, who 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.
Pribot and Early Prototypes
In February 2008, a Discovery Channel producer for the documentary series Prototype This! phoned Levandowski. The producer requested to borrow Levandowski's Ghost Rider, an autonomous two-wheeled motorcycle built for the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge. 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. Both declined, citing liability issues, but authorized Levandowski to proceed 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 (lidar) technology, sensors, and cameras. The Stanford team behind the Stanley car provided its code base. The episode depicting Pribot delivering pizza across the San Francisco Bay Bridge under police escort aired in December 2008.
The project's success convinced Google to greenlight its own self-driving car program in January 2009. In 2011, Google acquired 510 Systems 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.
Project Chauffeur
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 with no steering wheel, gas pedal, or brake pedal. In December, Google unveiled a Firefly prototype planned for testing 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 provided a ride in a fully autonomous vehicle to a blind man in Austin, Texas, the first entirely autonomous trip on a public road without a test driver or police escort. 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.
Waymo Spinout and Expansion
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 53,000-square-foot (4,900 m2) 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, who 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.
Public Service and Regulatory Scrutiny
In October 2020, Waymo became the first company to offer service to the public without safety drivers. 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. As of June 2026, Waymo operates in 10 US metropolitan areas with 3,871 robotaxis, providing 500,000 paid rides per week and logging 200 million fully autonomous miles.
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.