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    Waymo

    Also known as Waymo LLC, Waymo Driver, Waymo One

    Waymo operates driverless robotaxis. As of March 2026 it gave about 500,000 paid rides a week across 10 US cities.[1] Waymo reports more than 270 million fully autonomous miles through June 2026, with 82% fewer injury-causing crashes than human benchmarks.[2] Its research on scaling laws and foundation models also informs robotics.[3]

    Editor reviewedUpdated Robotics and embodied AIArtificial intelligence
    Key facts

    Self-driving cars are robots: they sense the world, decide and act. Waymo’s commercial scale and published research make it a reference point for the rest of embodied AI.[1][3]

    Scale

    As of March 2026 Waymo gave 500,000 paid robotaxi rides a week across 10 US cities, up from about 50,000 a week in May 2024.[1] By September 2026 it had launched service in its fifteenth US city, and it had announced new international cities.[4]

    Safety record

    Waymo reports more than 270 million fully autonomous miles through the end of June 2026. Against human benchmarks in its main cities, it reports 82% fewer injury-causing crashes and 95% fewer crashes causing serious injury or worse.[2] These figures are Waymo’s own analysis.[2] Waymo also publishes the human baselines it compares against. In October 2026 it released research, accepted by the Journal of Safety Research, that estimates crash risk for sober human drivers across the 50 most populous US urban areas, and reports that even sober drivers face nearly four times the risk at night.[5]

    AI approach

    Waymo describes a Waymo Foundation Model that powers its driver, its simulator and a “critic” that evaluates driving. The model combines a fast sensor-fusion encoder (camera, lidar and radar) with a driving vision-language model built on Google’s Gemini, the model family that Google DeepMind also adapts for robots in Gemini Robotics.[6][7] Waymo says the Gemini-trained part helps with rare situations, such as a vehicle on fire ahead, where it can prompt the car to take another route even if the lanes are clear.[8] The large models are too big to run in the car, so Waymo distils them into smaller “student” models for driving and for simulating hundreds of millions of miles.[9] This fast-plus-slow split resembles the two-system designs of robot VLAs such as Figure’s Helix.[10]

    Lessons for robotics

    In June 2025 Waymo reported that motion-forecasting quality follows a power law in training compute, using a 500,000-hour driving dataset. It said closed-loop driving performance shows a similar trend. Waymo argues the results apply to embodied AI more broadly, including robotics.[3] It also says that, despite heavy use of simulation, “there is simply no substitute” for real-world autonomous experience.[11] Roboticist Ken Goldberg cites Waymo as a model for robots that collect data while doing useful work.[12]

    Funding and expansion

    Waymo has raised large sums to fund that growth. It closed a $16 billion equity investment earlier in 2026, and on 8 October 2026 it closed a $5 billion term loan, its first debt financing.[13] For comparison, humanoid maker Figure raised more than $1 billion in its 2025 Series C.[14] Waymo said the new money will speed expansion of its ride-hailing service in the United States and abroad.[4]

    What to watch

    The questions are whether Waymo’s safety figures hold as it enters new cities and countries, and whether outside analyses confirm its own crash comparisons.[2][4] Roboticist Ken Goldberg cites Waymo as an example of robots that improve by collecting data while doing useful work.[12]

    Questions readers ask

    Why is Waymo part of a robotics course?

    A self-driving car is a robot that perceives and acts in the physical world. Waymo says its scaling-law findings have broader applications in embodied AI research, including robotics.[3]

    How many rides does Waymo give?

    About 500,000 paid rides a week across 10 US cities as of March 2026, up from about 50,000 a week in May 2024.[1]

    Is Waymo safer than human drivers?

    Waymo's own data covering 270 million miles through June 2026 show 82% fewer injury-causing crashes and 95% fewer serious-injury-or-worse crashes than human benchmarks.[2]

    Sources

    Each numbered claim is a statement we checked against the sources listed with it. Status shows how well established it is.

    1. [1]

      As of March 2026 Waymo was giving 500,000 paid robotaxi rides a week across 10 US cities, up from about 50,000 a week in May 2024. confirmedas of 2026-03-27

    2. [2]

      Waymo reports more than 270 million fully autonomous miles through June 2026, with 82% fewer injury-causing crashes and 95% fewer serious-injury-or-worse crashes than human benchmarks in its main cities. confirmedas of 2026-09-24

    3. [3]

      Waymo reported in June 2025 that motion-forecasting quality follows a power law in training compute and that closed-loop driving performance follows a similar trend, using a 500,000-hour driving dataset, and said the findings have applications in embodied AI research, including robotics. confirmedas of 2025-06-13

    4. [4]

      Waymo said in October 2026 that it had launched service in its fifteenth US city the previous month and had announced new international cities. confirmedas of 2026-10-08

    5. [5]

      In October 2026 Waymo published research, accepted by the Journal of Safety Research, that builds sober-driver crash baselines for the 50 most populous US urban areas and reports that sober drivers still face nearly four times the risk at night. confirmedas of 2026-10-08

    6. [6]

      Waymo describes a Waymo Foundation Model that combines a fast sensor-fusion encoder with a driving vision-language model built on Gemini, and that powers its driver, simulator and critic. confirmedas of 2025-12-09

    7. [7]

      In March 2025 Google DeepMind introduced Gemini Robotics, a vision-language-action model built on Gemini 2.0, together with Gemini Robotics-ER, an embodied-reasoning model with enhanced spatial understanding. confirmedas of 2025-03-25

    8. [8]

      Waymo says the Gemini-trained driving VLM in its foundation model helps with rare scenarios, such as signalling the car to reroute around a vehicle on fire even when the lanes are physically clear. confirmedas of 2025-12-09

    9. [9]

      Waymo says it adapts its foundation model into large teacher models for driving, simulation and evaluation, then distils them into smaller student models that can run on vehicles or simulate hundreds of millions of miles. confirmedas of 2025-12-09

    10. [10]

      Figure's Helix (February 2025) is a vision-language-action model with a slower onboard vision-language "System 2" at 7-9 Hz and a fast visuomotor "System 1" that outputs actions at 200 Hz. confirmedas of 2025-02-20

    11. [11]

      Waymo says there is no substitute for its volume of real-world fully autonomous driving experience, even with high-fidelity simulation. confirmedas of 2025-12-09

    12. [12]

      Goldberg advocates combining conventional engineering with learning, so that robots doing useful work (as Waymo and Ambi Robotics do) collect data that improves them over time. confirmedas of 2025-08-27

    13. [13]

      On 8 October 2026 Waymo closed a $5 billion term loan, its first debt financing, after closing a $16 billion equity investment earlier in 2026. confirmedas of 2026-10-08

    14. [14]

      In September 2025 Figure said it had raised more than $1 billion in Series C funding at a $39 billion post-money valuation, in a round led by Parkway Venture Capital. confirmedas of 2025-09-16

    Revision history (2)
    1. Page created.
    2. Added Waymo's 15th US city, international plans, $16 billion equity round and first $5 billion debt financing.

    Created Oct 10, 2026. Last reviewed by an editor on Oct 10, 2026. Next scheduled review: Jan 10, 2027.

    Cite this page

    "Waymo." ContentLora, updated Oct 10, 2026. https://contentlora.com/wiki/waymo

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