Company type | Subsidiary |
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Industry | Autonomous cars |
Predecessor | Google Self-Driving Car Project |
Founded |
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Founder | |
Headquarters | , US |
Area served |
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Key people |
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Number of employees | 2,500 (2023) |
Parent |
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Website | 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 company traces its origins to the Stanford Racing Team, which competed in the 2005 and 2007 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenges.[2] Google's development of self-driving technology began in January 2009,[3][4] 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.[5][6] After almost two years of road testing, the project was revealed in October 2010.[7][8][9]
In fall 2015, Google provided "the world's first fully driverless ride on public roads".[10] In December 2016, the project was renamed Waymo and spun out of Google as part of Alphabet.[11] In October 2020, Waymo became the first company to offer service to the public without safety drivers in the vehicle.[12][13][14][15] Waymo, as of 2024, operates commercial robotaxi services in Phoenix (Arizona), San Francisco (California), and Los Angeles (California)[16] with new services planned in Austin, Texas, Miami, Florida and Tokyo, Japan.[17][18] As of October 2024[update], it offers 150,000 paid rides per week totalling over 1 million miles weekly.[19]
Waymo is run by co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov.[20] The company raised US$5.5 billion in multiple outside funding rounds[21] by 2022 and raised $5.6 billion funding in 2024.[22] Waymo has or had partnerships with multiple vehicle manufacturers, including Stellantis,[23] Mercedes-Benz Group AG,[24] Jaguar Land Rover,[25] and Volvo.[26]
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