Waymo And Uber's Robotaxi Partnership Is Ending

Waymo is planning to serve riders via its own app in Austin and Atlanta.

Photo by: Waymo

By: Suvrat Kothari

Nov 4, at 4:59pm ET

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Waymo is planning to serve riders via its own app in Austin and Atlanta from 2028 onwards.
The company said the Uber partnership was a little bit of a "crapshoot."
Both companies still have grand ambitions when it comes to autonomy.

If you want to ride in a driverless Waymo in Austin or Atlanta, you can currently only do that via the Uber app thanks to an exclusive partnership between the two companies. That will change in 2028 because Waymo has decided to go solo in those two cities.

Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana told Bloomberg on Wednesday that the company will exit its partnership with Uber in Austin and Atlanta starting in January 2028. The reason? Mawakana said the Uber app doesn’t guarantee a driverless ride. You can enable autonomous rides via settings in the Uber app, but the chances of one showing up depend on how many Waymos are actually nearby. If there's no Waymo nearby, riders are matched with human drivers.

Uber says it offered to add a dedicated robotaxi ride option through its service so that customers would match with driverless cars more easily, but Waymo reportedly declined that.

“In the early days, we would partner because we didn’t have the scale,” Mawakana told the outlet. "...in that partnering, it was a little bit of a crapshoot," she added.

Photo by: Waymo

Customers were now demanding a more consistent experience, Mawakana said. That’s why, starting in January 2028, Waymos in Austin and Atlanta will operate the same way they’ve been operating in over two dozen other U.S. cities: via Waymo’s own dedicated app. With that, current partner Uber will also become a direct rival in those two cities.

The whole point of this partnership was to help Waymo scale and give riders exposure to its cutting-edge driverless technology. Uber is the go-to ride-hail app for millions of riders already. The company also has vast experience in fleet operations and logistics.

Waymo, by comparison, is far smaller but is growing quickly. It’s a fully-owned subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, which is valued at over $3.5 trillion as of writing. Waymo currently conducts over 500,000 paid driverless trips each week. It’s already operational in 15 U.S. cities and plans to add over a dozen more in the coming months. It's in a comfortable lead in the robotaxi race in the U.S., far ahead of Tesla and others.

Photo by: Lucid Motors

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It now seems more confident about going solo in Austin and Atlanta. However, it’s still partnering with Lyft for driverless rides in Nashville, although that partnership isn’t exclusive. Waymo also serves Nashville through its own app.

Uber also has grand ambitions when it comes to robotaxis. The company plans to have 700 robotaxis online by the end of this year and 2,000 by the end of 2027. It has emerged as a broker of robotaxi technology, inking deals with several companies including Rivian, Lucid, Wayve, and others to offer their driverless vehicles on the Uber app.