Waymo, the autonomous driving unit of Alphabet, announced on Tuesday that it launched its ride-hailing service in four new cities — Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando — expanding its footprint to ten major US metropolitan markets.
It is the first time the company has opened to the public in multiple cities simultaneously.
Select riders will receive invitations through the Waymo app starting Tuesday, with additional access rolling out gradually ahead of a full public launch later this year.
The company currently provides more than 400,000 weekly trips across its existing six markets — Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, and Austin — and is targeting more than one million rides per week by the end of 2026.
“Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando are critical to our plans, as we lay groundwork for service in 20+ cities,” co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said on Tuesday.
The next wave of target cities includes Las Vegas, Washington, Detroit, and Boston.
Waymo is also planning its first overseas market in London and Tokyo.
Earlier this month, the company raised $16 billion in a round led by Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global, and Sequoia Capital, with Alphabet as the majority investor.
The funding raised its valuation to $126 billion.
Fleet and Technology
The new cities will initially operate with dozens of Jaguar I-PACE vehicles using Waymo‘s fifth-generation driver system. Service zones range from 25 to 60 square miles depending on the city.
Waymo said it will scale fleet size and coverage as ridership grows.
Separately, the company began offering employees and their guests rides in its sixth-generation driver system earlier this month, built on Geely’s Ojai electric vehicle platform, in California. The new hardware signals the eventual replacement of the Jaguar I-PACE fleet.
Waymo is the only US company operating a commercial fully autonomous ride-hailing service without safety drivers at scale. Its direct competitors, Tesla and Amazon-owned Zoox, remain in earlier stages of deployment.
Tesla launched a paid robotaxi service in Austin in June 2025 using modified Model Y vehicles, but continues to operate with a human safety monitor in the front passenger seat.
In late January, it began unsupervised testing without passengers in Austin.
The company had roughly 135 robotaxis in service by December 2025 and plans to begin production of its purpose-built Cybercab in April 2026.
Tesla has also expanded road testing to San Francisco, Arizona, and Massachusetts, though it has not yet offered fully driverless commercial rides to the public.
Waymo offers its ride-hailing service through its own app in eight US cities, while Atlanta and Austin are accessible only through the Uber app.
According to the company, it has surpassed 200 million fully autonomous miles.
A peer-reviewed study based on more than 127 million of those miles found that serious injury crashes were reduced tenfold compared to human baselines, while pedestrian-involved crashes fell twelvefold.
Safety Investigations
The expansion comes amid heightened regulatory scrutiny.
On January 23, a Waymo robotaxi struck a child near Grant Elementary School in Santa Monica, California, during morning drop-off hours.
The child ran into the road from behind a double-parked SUV; Waymo said its system braked hard, reducing speed from 17 mph to under 6 mph before impact. The child sustained minor injuries.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an investigation into the incident, examining whether the autonomous system exercised appropriate caution in a school zone.
Separately, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating reports that Waymo robotaxis illegally passed stopped school buses in Austin at least 19 times since the start of the 2025–26 school year.
Waymo recalled more than 3,000 vehicles in December to update the relevant software.
Remote Operations
The company’s Chief Safety Officer Mauricio Peña disclosed at a US Senate Commerce Committee hearing on February 4 that the company employs remote operators who can provide guidance to its robotaxis, with approximately half based in the Philippines.
Peña told the committee, chaired by Senator Ted Cruz, that the operators “provide guidance” and “do not remotely drive the vehicles.”
“The Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic driving tasks, so that is just one additional input,” Peña added.
The disclosure prompted Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) to open a formal investigation on February 3 into seven autonomous vehicle companies’ use of remote assistance operators, citing safety, national security, and privacy concerns.
Waymo clarified last week that approximately 70 human agents are on duty at any given time, with roughly half in the Philippines and the remainder in the United States.
New York Setback
The four-city launch follows a setback in New York, where Governor Kathy Hochul last week withdrew a proposal to allow driverless rides outside New York City, citing safety concerns.
Waymo had been seeking to expand into the state as part of its broader 20-city rollout.
Uber’s AV Strategy
Last Wednesday, Uber announced it will invest over $100 million to develop AV charging hubs, to be first deployed in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Dallas.
According to an Uber spokesperson cited by Bloomberg, the funds “will cover site development costs, equipment, grid connection, and associated capital expenditure.”
On Monday, the company created a new business unit combining its operational capabilities into a suite of services for AV developers — named Uber Autonomous Solutions.
The unit brings together physical and digital infrastructure, rider experience, and fleet operations, which Uber said are intended to help AV partners deploy and scale their services more efficiently than they could independently.
The moves reflect Uber‘s evolving role in autonomous mobility: rather than developing its own self-driving technology — it sold its AV unit to Aurora in 2020 — the company is positioning itself as the infrastructure and operations layer that autonomous vehicle makers plug into.
