Waymo Self-Driving Electric Car Sighted In London

(Ming Yeung/Getty Images)

waymo’s world

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.

3/30/26 10:50AM

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.”

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5