Waymo

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, the parent company of Google.

The company traces its origins to the Stanford Racing Team, which competed in the 2005 and 2007 DARPA Grand Challenges. Google's development of self-driving technology began in January 2009, where it was 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. After almost two years of road testing with seven vehicles, the New York Times revealed its existence in October 2010.

In fall 2015, Google provided "the world's first fully driverless ride on public roads". 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 in the vehicle. Waymo currently operates commercial robotaxi services in Phoenix, Arizona and San Francisco, with new services planned in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas.

Waymo is run by co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov. The company raised $5.5 billion in multiple outside funding rounds. Waymo has partnerships with multiple vehicle manufacturers, including Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz Group AG, Jaguar Land Rover, and Volvo.