Waymo LLC, formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, is an American autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google.
Google's development of self-driving technology began in January 2009, at the company's Google X lab run by co-founder Sergey Brin. The project was launched by Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) and Anthony Levandowski, founder of 510 Systems and Anthony's Robots. The project was renamed Waymo in December 2016 following a corporate restructuring of Google.
Waymo operates commercial self-driving taxi services in Phoenix, Arizona and San Francisco, CA. In October 2020, the company expanded the service to the public, and it was the only self-driving commercial service that operates without safety backup drivers in the vehicle at that time. Waymo also develops driving technology for use in other vehicles, including delivery vans and Class 8 tractor-trailers for delivery and logistics.Waymo is run by co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov. The company has raised $5.5 billion in multiple outside funding rounds. Waymo has partnerships with multiple vehicle manufacturers to integrate Waymo's technology, including with Mercedes-Benz Group AG, Nissan-Renault, Stellantis, Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo, and Geely.
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