Waymo announces it has completed 10 million robotaxi rides, doubling its total in just five months.
A Waymo self-driving car, seen with a driver, stops at a red light outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Friday, March 31, 2025.
Bill Clark | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana told CNBC on Tuesday that the Alphabet-owned ride-hailing company has reached 10 million trips, doubling in the past five months. “These are all paid trips, and they represent people who are really integrating Waymo Driver into their everyday lives,” said Mawakana, speaking at the Google I/O developer conference. The 10 million figure includes rides in Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the Phoenix area.
Waymo is delivering more than 250,000 paid robotaxi rides a week, Alphabet said in its April earnings report. On Monday, Waymo announced that it had won approval to expand its autonomous ride-hailing service to more parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, including San Jose.
The robotaxi company is part of Alphabet’s “Other Bets” unit. Revenue in this category fell 9% in the first quarter from a year earlier to $450 million, and the operating loss grew to $1.23 billion from $1.02 billion a year ago. While those figures include multiple businesses, Mawakana confirmed that Waymo is not yet profitable but is “super focused on building a sustainable business.” “We’re proving out that it can be a profitable business,” she said. “There’s a path to profitability.”
Waymo faces potential competition from Tesla, which plans to launch its robotaxi service in Austin next month. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also confirmed that the plan remains on track and that the company will start with about 10 vehicles, aiming to rapidly expand to thousands if the debut goes well without any incidents. Musk indicated that Tesla aims to bring its robotaxis to Los Angeles and San Francisco following the launch in Austin, claiming that Tesla’s approach to robotaxis is more ambitious than Waymo’s. Tesla primarily relies on camera-based systems and computer vision instead of using sophisticated sensors like lidar and radar in its vehicles.
Mawakana remarked that Waymo has taken what it considers the “safest path.” “There’s probably a lot of ways it can be done, but we’re the only ones that have done it,” she said. “We’ve been doing it 24 hours a day for almost five years. And so to us, it’s really important to focus on safety, not focus on safety and then cost — not cost and then safety.”
WATCH: Waymo co-CEO announces 10 million autonomous trips milestone
