Waymo Reportedly Plans to Exit Its Uber Partnership and Go Solo in Austin and Atlanta

Waymo Is Done Sharing Its Rides With Uber

Waymo has told Uber it plans to start selling rides through its own app in Austin and Atlanta by January 2028, setting the stage for a full exit from a partnership that was once held up as the model for how autonomous vehicles would reach the public 1.

The Financial Times reported that the Alphabet-owned company is seeking a way out of the deal that deploys its robotaxis on the ride-hailing giant's network in both cities 1. Uber confirmed to TechCrunch that Waymo communicated the intention to operate through its own app starting in January 2028 and said the current contract runs through May 2028 1.

This is the second separation. The two companies already ended their Phoenix arrangement earlier this year 1. Austin and Atlanta are the last cities where Waymo operates through Uber's platform. Once they go, the partnership effectively ceases to exist.

The unraveling follows months of friction. Earlier this year, Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli posted video of what he characterized as unsafe and "scary" behavior by a Waymo robotaxi 1. In May, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi criticized robotaxi behavior in school zones and emergency situations on an earnings call without naming Waymo 1. The two companies have also landed on opposite sides of policy fights over robotaxi regulation 1.

For Uber, the partnership solved a straightforward problem: how to stock its platform with autonomous rides without developing the technology in-house. For Waymo, the appeal was distribution. Launching inside Uber's app meant instant access to riders who already had the app installed, payment methods stored, and habits formed. Uber provided the customer. Waymo provided the car.

But alliances fracture when both sides want the same thing. Uber's model depends on being the platform that sits between riders and whoever is driving, human or machine. Waymo's model depends on owning the rider directly. Those are not long-term-compatible ambitions. Waymo has no interest in remaining a supplier inside a marketplace that another company controls.

The timeline confirms the calculation. Waymo wants its own app running in Austin and Atlanta by January 2028, four months before its contract with Uber expires in May 1. It is not waiting for the deal to lapse. It is building a parallel service while the partnership is still active, which puts the two companies in direct competition for the same riders before the exit paperwork is finished.

Operators across the robotaxi industry partnered with ride-hailing platforms because they needed the riders, and building a consumer-facing app from scratch looked slow and expensive next to the engineering challenge of making a car drive itself. That calculation is changing. The companies with proven autonomous technology are building the operational scale to acquire customers directly, and the cost of standing up a ride-hailing app is negligible compared to the cost of developing a self-driving car.

When Waymo first deployed robotaxis through Uber's app, it needed Uber's riders more than Uber needed Waymo's vehicles. The technology has since matured. Every robotaxi operator with a working fleet now faces the same question: why surrender the customer relationship to a platform that is also your competitor?