Waymo’s had a quiet — but huge — increase in ridership
In one year in California, Waymo’s paid driverless rides increased from 12,000 to over 312,000 a month, though the unit still loses parent company Alphabet money.
Waymo has quietly ramped up its status. A lot.
Last year, Waymo started offering paid, driverless rides to passengers in San Francisco. In the year since, Waymo went from 12,000 rides in August 2023 to over 312,000 rides in August 2024. Its service area in California also expanded from one city to multiple, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and three cities in the San Francisco Peninsula, where the region’s main airport is located.
During an earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Waymo’s parent company, said Waymo is now driving more than 1 million fully autonomous miles and over 150,000 paid rides each week. That’s about 50% more than what the company announced just last quarter. Now, Waymo has about 700 cars operating across three states: California, Arizona, and Texas.
Waymo doesn’t seem to face much competition yet. Cruise, the only other company that has obtained a driverless-deployment permit in California, is not providing driverless ride-hail service to the public in the state.
In an oversubscribed fundraising round this October, Waymo said it had raised $5.6 billion in new capital, led by Alphabet and outside investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity. Bloomberg reported last week that the latest round valued Waymo at more than $45 billion — which was more than the market size of Ford and the company’s partner, Hyundai.
Still, the success of Waymo begs a reality check. Uber racks up millions of rides every hour globally, and it dominates the US ride-hailing market with more than three-quarters of market share. The company is also now profitable. Alphabet’s so-called “other bets,” which include Waymo and other subsidiaries, lost $1.12 billion in Q3 2024, though less than the $1.19 billion in Q3 2023.
