Waymo will stop offering rides through Uber in Austin and Atlanta starting in January 2028, moving those cities onto its own app. Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana told Bloomberg the decision rests on the Uber app's inability to guarantee that a rider gets a driverless car.
Today those two cities are the exception: they are the places where a Waymo can only be booked through Uber, under an exclusive arrangement between the two companies. From 2028 they will work like the more than two dozen other US cities where Waymo already runs its own booking service.
Mawakana's explanation is about consistency rather than technology. Uber riders can switch on autonomous rides in the app's settings, but whether a Waymo turns up depends on how many of the cars are nearby. If none is, the app matches the rider with a human driver.
Uber proposed adding a dedicated robotaxi option so customers would be matched with driverless cars more reliably, and Waymo declined, according to the report.
"In the early days, we would partner because we didn't have the scale," Mawakana told Bloomberg, describing the partnering as "a little bit of a crapshoot". She said customers now want a more consistent experience.
That matters because a robotaxi brand is only as strong as the promise it makes. A rider who opens an app hoping for a driverless car and gets a human-driven one has effectively been given a lottery, not a service. Waymo's own app turns the ride into a guarantee, which is the product it is selling in every other market it serves.
The change turns a partner into a competitor in Austin and Atlanta. Uber is already the default ride-hail app for millions of riders and brings fleet operations and logistics experience, while Waymo is far smaller but growing quickly.
Waymo is a wholly owned subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, which the report values at over $3.5 trillion. The company says it completes more than 500,000 paid driverless trips a week and operates in 15 US cities, with plans to add over a dozen more in the coming months.
Its lead in the US robotaxi race over Tesla and others is comfortable for now. Ending the Uber arrangement in two cities is a sign of that confidence rather than a retreat: the partnership existed to borrow scale Waymo no longer needs to borrow there.
Waymo still works with Lyft on driverless rides in Nashville, though that arrangement is not exclusive, and it also serves the city through its own app. The Austin and Atlanta exit is therefore a targeted change, not an end to third-party distribution.
Uber, meanwhile, is positioning itself as a broker of robotaxi technology rather than a builder. It plans to have 700 robotaxis online by the end of this year and 2,000 by the end of 2027, and has signed deals with companies including Rivian, Lucid and Wayve to offer their driverless vehicles through its app.
Those two strategies can coexist. Uber can lose Waymo's cars in two cities and still rent out other companies' robotaxis at scale, while Waymo keeps its own app as the front door wherever it can fill demand itself.
Waymo has not said whether Uber will offer its own robotaxis in Austin and Atlanta from 2028. The sources describe Uber's 700 and 2,000 vehicle targets and its deals with Rivian, Lucid, Wayve and others, but do not confirm which vehicles, if any, Uber will run in those two cities once the Waymo arrangement ends.
Also unannounced is what happens to the Uber partnership beyond Austin and Atlanta, and whether the two companies will strike further exclusive deals elsewhere. For now the only confirmed date is January 2028, and the only confirmed change is that Waymo riders in those two cities will book through Waymo.
