US: Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary, has announced that it has completed over 10 million fully autonomous rides, cementing its place as a frontrunner in AI-driven mobility.
The milestone was revealed at Google I/O 2025 by Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov, who hailed it as a turning point in real-world artificial intelligence applications.
Launched in 2009 as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, Waymo has evolved into a commercial success story. It operates a fleet of over 700 autonomous vehicles across major US cities including Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, delivering over 50,000 paid public rides every week, five times more than in the same period last year.
“Building a system that just works is one thing. But creating a safe, reliable, and scalable autonomous service without a human behind the wheel, that’s the real breakthrough,” Dolgov said at the event.
The Waymo Driver’s officially served over 10 MILLION paid rides! 🎉 Huge thanks to our riders for being an integral part of this journey, and to our teams for continuing to redefine what’s possible. ✨ pic.twitter.com/OkYXrmziok
— Waymo (@Waymo) May 20, 2025
According to data from the California Public Utilities Commission, Waymo conducted 10,000 weekly paid rides in mid-2023, which grew to 50,000 in early 2024 and reached 250,000 monthly by August.
At the core of this expansion is advanced artificial intelligence, which Dolgov described as the most mature application of AI in the physical world.
Waymo’s technology stack has undergone massive evolution from early use of convolutional neural networks to modern visual language models (VLMs) and transformers.
These innovations allow the Waymo Driver to understand complex road scenarios, predict human behavior, and make real-time decisions with greater contextual awareness.
Dolgov also highlighted the company’s safety record, citing an analysis by Swiss Re which found that Waymo’s autonomous driver is about 10 times safer than humans, particularly in serious collisions and pedestrian-related incidents.
Real-world examples showcased the system’s responsiveness, including a case in Austin where a Waymo vehicle avoided a fallen scooter rider and another where it swerved to escape a truck drifting into its lane.
Waymo is now preparing to expand to new markets, including Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C., furthering its mission to make roads safer through autonomous technology.
“Every mile we drive autonomously brings us closer to a world with fewer crashes, more mobility, and cleaner air,” Dolgov said.
