Waymo’s Ambitious Robotaxi Expansion

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Waymo gets a lot of attention for its fast-paced expansion, and for good reason. The company’s robotaxis seem to be arriving in new cities or expanding within existing service areas every week.

We’ve known for a while that Waymo’s sixth-generation self-driving system, which debuted in its next-generation Ojai robotaxi, is central to those ambitions. However, now we have a better understanding about why this next-gen vehicle is so crucial.

The company, which recently opened its Ojai robotaxi to all riders in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco, has repeatedly said that this next-gen vehicle is cheaper to build, operate, and maintain. These ingredients are required if the company has any hopes of someday turning a profit.

A Custom Silicon Chip for Enhanced Efficiency

What was less clear until this week was just how hands-on and vertically integrated Waymo has become as it chases that goal. The company shared this week that it built a custom silicon chip, specifically a 5 nm ASIC chip, which is designed to handle the massive influx of raw data before it reaches the core “brain” of the self-driving system.

This chip delivers more than 1,000 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) of computing performance, a statistic that puts it roughly in the same performance range as Nvidia’s latest DRIVE AGX Thor automotive processor, a powerful computer designed for automated driving applications.

The end result, Waymo says, is a system that has “unmatched efficiency and performance.” The upshot is that Waymo contends that this chip is a critical piece of a system that can react fast and safely in complex, high-density environments, like cities.

Waymo isn’t working alone on compute, though. The company listed a slew of partners, some for the first time, including AMD, Micron, Nvidia, Samsung, Sandisk, Socionext, and TSMC.

A Little Bird Speaks About Lidar Security Risks

A couple of little birds spoke to Sean O’Kane (senior reporter, special projects at TechCrunch) about a rather curious investigation being conducted by the Idaho National Laboratory. According to our sources, the lab is evaluating whether Chinese lidar sensors might pose a security risk if they become widely used on vehicles in the United States.

This investigation is notable on its own, but what got our attention is that the research is being funded by a company, or a group of companies, in the electric and autonomous vehicle industries.

O’Kane reached out to numerous companies, including Rivian, General Motors, Ford, Kodiak, Lucid Motors, Nuro, and Uber. And all of these companies said they were unaware of the review. Aurora, Nvidia, and Zoox didn’t respond to questions.

Waymo isn’t the only company working on custom silicon chips for its self-driving systems. Einride, the Swedish electric and autonomous trucking company, struck a deal with Tesla to buy 500 of its electric Semis and make the electric big rigs available to its customers, which include Amazon.

Einride’s fleet will be added in phases to the company’s existing customers over the next 24 months, starting in September. Tesla is trying to scale up but recently pulled back on promises to reach “volume production” in 2026.

Grounded, the Detroit-based startup that customizes electric and gas-powered vans, raised a $5 million seed round, with repeat investments from existing backers Also Capital and Chicago-based early-stage firm The 81 Collection, along with Animal Capital, the Michigan Outdoor Innovation Fund, and “various SpaceX alumni,” according to founder and CEO Sam Shapiro.

Uber said it is investing in, and partnering with, drone delivery company Zipline. Uber and Zipline didn’t disclose the investment amount but did share one lofty goal: to make 1 million deliveries per day using the startup’s drones by the end of 2029.

Vessev, a New Zealand startup developing electric hydrofoil boats, raised $19 million in a Series A round led by Blackbird Ventures. New investors GD1 and Rypples joined alongside existing investors K1W1, Icehouse Ventures, Shasta Ventures, NZVC, and existing angel investors.

Amazon wants its drone delivery service to reach nearly 500 U.S. cities by the end of 2026, expanding its current footprint sixfold. Bedrock Robotics, an autonomous vehicle technology startup founded by veterans of Waymo and Segment, says excavators equipped with its self-driving system are now operating fully autonomously at three large customer sites in Nevada and Texas.

Hyundai’s luxury car brand Genesis unveiled a seven-seater electric SUV called the GV90 that will compete with other hefty EVs like the Cadillac Escalade IQ and Rivian R1S. Tesla is one of 11 carmakers in China recalling millions of vehicles over its hidden emergency door releases, which can trap occupants in the event of a crash or a fire. Xiaomi, Xpeng, and Geely brands Zeekr and Lynk & Co. are also recalling EVs.

Tesla, Uber, and Waymo all received permits from Nevada regulators that will allow them to operate commercial robotaxi services in Clark County, home to Las Vegas. Together, these permits would deploy up to 8,000 robotaxis across the county over the next 12 months.

Uber was fined €825 million ($966 million) by the Dutch Data Protection Authority for using automated systems to deactivate or suspend driver accounts without adequately informing them — a violation of European data protection law.