Waymo Self-Driving Electric Car Sighted In London

(Ming Yeung/Getty Images)

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Waymo’s now serving more than 500,000 paid robotaxi rides every week

The Alphabet-owned company grew its ridership more than tenfold in less than two years.

Per the company’s post on X last Thursday, Google-owned Waymo is now providing 500,000 paid robotaxi rides every week, an eye-popping figure that’s slowly turning the street-side attraction into a daily scenery in some 10 cities in the US.

Great reporting from TechCrunch captures the scale and speed of Waymo’s journey. Back in May 2024, that number was a mere 50,000, but thanks to a rapid expansion to new markets in Austin, Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando, the company is now doing half a million rides a week. That’s about 50 rides per minute.

In terms of mileage, Waymo reached an astonishing 171 million cumulative miles by the end of last year, or some “200 lifetimes of driving,” per the company. Its robotaxi fleet has grown to more than 3,000 vehicles as of December 2025, and might even size up 18x if reports of Hyundai looking to supply Waymo with 50,000 cars becomes a dream come true.

Operating as a stand-alone entity, but owned by Google and YouTube owner Alphabet, Waymo has the deep pockets needed to invest in the expensive autonomous driving technology, raising $16 billion back in February, valuing it at $126 billion and putting it miles ahead of independent, smaller competitors like Wayve or Pony AI. In February, CEO Tekedra Mawakana said she expects the company to hit 1 million weekly paid rides this year.

Way mo’ to go

Waymo’s growing presence in the get-people-somewhere game is hard to ignore for companies like Uber. For now, the two are working together, with Uber providing exclusive access to Waymo vehicles in cities like Austin and Atlanta through its widely popular app.

But that mutually beneficial relationship could become an existential threat for Uber if people continue to adopt robotaxis at this pace. JPMorgan analysts expect Waymo to account for 7% of the entire US ride-share market by 2030, “taking some share from Uber and Lyft,” adding that such an estimate “could still be conservative.”

Jon Keegan3/27/26

Judge blocks Pentagon’s move to blacklist Anthropic

A federal judge in Northern California has granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Pentagon from labeling Anthropic as a national security supply chain risk.

The ruling temporarily prevents the Defense Department from restricting the AI company’s access to federal contracts amid a dispute over its refusal to allow certain military and surveillance uses of its technology. The designation could also have shifted lucrative government work toward competitors, including OpenAI.

Earlier this month, Anthropic, the company behind Claude, sued 17 federal agencies and their heads, alleging the government exceeded its statutory authority.

Rani Molla3/27/26

Report: SpaceX’s record IPO may grant preferential access to retail investors and Tesla shareholders

SpaceX’s impending IPO could raise $40 billion to $80 billion and rank as the largest ever — as well as one of the most unconventional.

The Wall Street Journal reports several ways CEO Elon Musk is considering breaking with IPO norms:

Investors in his other companies, including Tesla, could receive preferential access to shares.
Individual investors may get a third or more of the allocation, far above the typical ~10% mark.
Instead of a traditional road show, Musk wants investors to visit SpaceX facilities in person.

Exclusive | The SpaceX IPO Will Be Just as Unconventional as Musk Himself

Investors in his other companies, including Tesla, could receive preferential access to shares.
Individual investors may get a third or more of the allocation, far above the typical ~10% mark.
Instead of a traditional road show, Musk wants investors to visit SpaceX facilities in person.

Rani Molla3/26/26

Tesla released estimates for Q1 deliveries and they’re lower than analysts expected

Ahead of first-quarter earnings next month, Tesla released its own company-compiled Wall Street consensus estimate for deliveries: 365,645 vehicles. While that’s lower than the 382,000 FactSet consensus estimate, it represents a nearly 9% jump from Q1 2025, when Tesla sold 336,681 vehicles.

Tesla started releasing its own consensus estimates to the public — not just institutional investors — for the first time in Q4 2025. The move was seen as a way to temper investor expectations, as other estimates were too high. Last quarter, Tesla’s compilation was closer to actual numbers, which fell 16% year over year.

The market-implied odds from event contracts suggest 64% of traders think Tesla’s Q1 deliveries will be more than 350,000, 44% think it will be higher than 360,000, and just 21% have it at higher than 370,000.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

The toughest AI benchmark just got a whole lot tougher

ARC-AGI-3 is the latest version of a clever benchmark that challenges AI models to solve mini video games with no written instructions.

Jon Keegan3/26/26

Rani Molla3/26/26

The US leads the world in robotaxi deployments

Every day it seems another robotaxi launches somewhere in the world. But most of them are in the US.

Of the 171 active robotaxi deployments globally, 69 — or 40% — are in the US, according to a new report from the Bank of America Institute. China, the next largest market, accounts for 24% of deployments.

Most of those deployments are still in testing or early commercial stages. Only 10 US cities currently have fully commercial robotaxi operations, defined as services that operate on public roads, carry paying passengers, run fully driverless without a safety driver, and function all day in any weather.

For now, that effectively refers to Alphabet’s Waymo, which operates commercially in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, San Antonio, and the San Francisco Bay Area. That definition excludes competitors like Tesla, whose Robotaxi service uses safety monitors, and Amazon’s Zoox, which has yet to charge customers for rides.