Waymo opens robotaxi service to ‘select riders’ in 4 more U.S. cities

With the multi-city expansion, Waymo is now operating its service in 10 U.S. cities, extending its lead in the North American driverless ride-hailing market. The Google sister company is aiming to lock in loyal riders and win over skeptics, including six in 10 U.S. drivers who said they were fearful of driverless cars, according to a 2025 survey by the American Automobile Association.

The expansion comes as rivals Tesla, Amazon-owned Zoox and startups Waabi and Nuro work to bring their own commercial robotaxi services online to U.S. markets. Robotaxi leaders in Asia including Apollo Go, which is owned by Baidu, and publicly-traded WeRide have been snapping up marketshare overseas.

Waymo said “select riders” in the four cities who have downloaded the company’s app will “receive an invitation to take their first local rides.” The company plans to invite more passengers on a rolling basis and make the service generally available in these markets by the end of 2026.

Tuesday’s expansion “deepens our commitment in the states of Texas and Florida,” Waymo said in its blog.

In January, Waymo opened service to riders in Miami, and the company began serving Austin riders last year in partnership with Uber. Additionally, Waymo operates in the Atlanta, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area markets.

For the markets launched Tuesday, Waymo will use its fifth-generation driver system in its base model Jaguar I-PACE sedans. Earlier this month, the company began offering employees and their guests rides in Waymo’s sixth-generation driver system, built on Geely’s base model Ojai electric cars, in California.

The company in February also announced that it raised a $16 billion funding round that valued the company at $126 billion, with Alphabet serving as the “majority investor.”

At the end of January, Waymo was operating just over 3,000 autonomous vehicles, according to filings with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The auto safety regulator has initiated investigations into the way the company’s vehicles behave around schools and school buses.

The company has also faced criticism for how its vehicles behaved during a December power outage in San Francisco in the middle of a storm. Waymo vehicles stopped in the middle of some roads and contributed to gridlock.

In a letter to Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., this month, Waymo said it was already providing over 400,000 paid trips per week across the U.S. and had surpassed 20 million trips over the lifetime of its service.

Markey has called on Waymo, and other AV developers, to be more transparent about the way their driverless vehicles rely on humans, namely “remote assistants,” to give their cars guidance from far-away customer service centers when the vehicles encounter difficult to navigate situations.

— CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed reporting