Short answers, pulled from the story.
Waymo became the first company to offer driverless rides to the general public in October 2020, when it opened its Waymo One service in Phoenix, Arizona without safety drivers. The service had launched for invited testers in December 2018 and went fully driverless for the public two years later.
By February 2026, Waymo had raised a $16 billion funding round that valued the company at $126 billion, with $13 billion of that round coming from Alphabet. Prior to that round, the company had raised more than $11 billion in total capital, including a $5.6 billion round in October 2024.
In February 2017, Waymo sued Uber alleging that former Google employee Anthony Levandowski had downloaded 9 gigabytes of data containing more than a hundred trade secrets, including details of Waymo's proprietary lidar technology, before joining Uber. The case settled with Uber giving Waymo 0.34% of its stock, equivalent to $245 million, and Levandowski was later sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to one of 33 charges in 2020.
A 2024 study by Waymo and Swiss Re estimated that Waymo generated 92% fewer bodily injury claims and 88% fewer property damage claims than human drivers over the same number of miles in the same locations. Experts noted that the 25 million miles in the study represent only 0.0008% of the roughly 3 trillion miles logged annually by human drivers in the US.
In 2025, Waymo vehicles were recorded illegally passing stopped school buses in Atlanta and Austin. Austin Independent School District reported 20 such violations between the start of the 2025 school year and December 1. The NHTSA opened two separate investigations, Waymo recalled its software in December 2025, and the NTSB found that in one incident a Waymo car had stopped for a bus but then proceeded after a remote operator incorrectly indicated the bus lights were off.
Waymo currently operates robotaxi services across multiple US metropolitan areas including Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, and Atlanta, with 3,700 robotaxis providing 500,000 paid rides per week. Announced expansions include Tokyo in 2026, London in September 2026, and San Diego by mid-2026.