Waymo has opened its Ojai robotaxi to all riders in Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco, while the company says its sixth-generation self-driving system sits at the center of that expansion. The move puts more people inside a machine built to move through dense cities under corporate control, with Waymo now leaning on a custom silicon chip it says is critical to the system’s speed and safety.
Who Gets to Move, and Who Builds the Machine
Waymo said this week that it built a custom 5 nm ASIC chip designed to handle the massive influx of raw data before it reaches the core "brain" of the self-driving system. The company said the chip delivers more than 1,000 TOPS, a figure it says puts it roughly in the same performance range as Nvidia’s latest DRIVE AGX Thor automotive processor. Waymo called the result a system with "unmatched efficiency and performance," and said the chip is a critical piece of a system that can react fast and safely in complex, high-density environments like cities.
That’s the language of control, dressed up as progress. The machine gets the praise. The people inside the cities get the experiment.
Waymo listed partners including AMD, Micron, Nvidia, Samsung, Sandisk, Socionext and TSMC. The company’s expansion depends on a chain of powerful firms, each one feeding the next layer of the apparatus that turns streets into test corridors and riders into data points.
The Industry Keeps Building Its Own Future
Sean O’Kane, senior reporter, special projects at TechCrunch, said sources told him the Idaho National Laboratory is evaluating whether Chinese lidar sensors might pose a security risk if they become widely used on vehicles in the United States. He said 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 Rivian, General Motors, Ford, Kodiak, Lucid Motors, Nuro and Uber, and all said they were unaware of the review. Aurora, Nvidia and Zoox didn’t respond to questions.
That’s a tidy little arrangement: industry money, federal lab scrutiny, and a public left to guess who’s steering the process. The companies say they don’t know. The funding still came from somewhere.
Also, the startup incubated within Rivian raised another $150 million in a Series D round led by Prysm Capital with participation from existing backers Eclipse, Greenoaks and MVP Ventures. Also has raised $455 million since it spun out of Rivian in March 2025. When Also launched in spring 2025, it was described as a micromobility company focused on pedal-assist electric bikes and commercial cargo quads. Now it is a "Palo Alto-based technology company building the world’s most capable driven and autonomous small electric vehicles." That autonomous driving component appeared earlier this year when Also closed a $200 million round and announced a multiyear commercial agreement with DoorDash to develop and deploy autonomous delivery vehicles.
The money keeps flowing upward. The mission keeps getting rewritten.
Delivery, Surveillance, and the Next Layer of Control
Serve Robotics partnered with Grubhub to use its sidewalk robots, starting in Chicago, Los Angeles and Alexandria, Virginia. Serve also announced that its existing partnership with DoorDash has expanded to San Jose, California, and Washington, D.C. Uber said it is investing in, and partnering with, drone delivery company Zipline, with a goal of making 1 million deliveries per day using Zipline’s drones by the end of 2029. Einride 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. The Tesla Semis will be added in phases to Einride’s fleet over the next 24 months, starting in September.
Grounded 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. Vessev raised $19 million in a Series A round led by Blackbird Ventures, with new investors GD1 and Rypples joining 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 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 the Cadillac Escalade IQ and Rivian R1S.
The pattern is plain. More automation. More capital. More control over labor, streets and delivery routes, all sold as convenience.
Tesla is one of 11 carmakers in China recalling millions of vehicles over 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, with permits that 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. Uber also announced early rider testing in London with partner Wayve; the launch of a robotaxi service in Zagreb, Croatia, with Pony.ai and Verne; and driverless rides in Dubai with Baidu. Waymo has responded to questions from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as part of the regulator’s investigation into a crash in which a robotaxi struck a child at low speed, and the responses released so far are all redacted.
That’s the real shape of the story: corporate fleets expanding under permits, regulators trailing behind, and the public left to absorb the risk while the companies keep building.