Waymo is headed to Washington, D.C., the latest expansion for the small, but promising Alphabet business. The news Waymo One aims to launch its self-driving robotaxi service in the nation’s capital in 2026, the company announced Tuesday. Waymo currently operates in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and Phoenix. It also has a partnership with Uber to service Austin and Atlanta. Before opening in D.C., Waymo will work with local policymakers to tweak existing laws to allow for autonomous vehicles to operate without a human driver inside. Waymo began testing in D.C. last year using manually driven vehicles operated by employees. The company has been gathering data from rides across different neighborhoods to ensure the service will be ready by next year. Shares of Alphabet were up 1% Tuesday. Big picture Waymo provides more than 200,000 fully autonomous paid trips each week, according to the company. It completed four million trips in 2024 and now has a total of over five million rides under its belt. That’s still small compared to Uber’s daily average of 28 million trips. But Waymo has come a long way from its inception in 2009 as Google’s self-driving project. Waymo became a standalone company in 2016 and today has a growing partnership with Uber to help drive growth in the AV market. Waymo One is housed in Alphabet’s Other Bets segment, outside its core Search, YouTube and cloud businesses. Alphabet doesn’t break out the financials for companies inside Other Bets, but given the significant investment needed to build and scale the service, it’s likely the business is operating at a loss. In Alphabet’s fourth-quarter earnings , Other Bets reported an operating loss of $1.2 billion. Still, Alphabet continues to invest heavily because it sees a “tremendous opportunity” that requires rapid scale to get more vehicles into more markets quickly, said Alphabet CFO Anat Ashkenazi at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom conference on March 4. Ashkenazi further suggested that Waymo’s autonomous vehicle technology could be “the future of transportation” and that it has the potential to be a very meaningful and interesting opportunity for Alphabet. Bottom line The expansion of Waymo’s network into new markets is a positive sign, showing it could become another revenue stream outside of its core and already mature businesses. Jim Cramer has previously said Waymo could be a “substantive reason to stay in Alphabet.” However, Jim has been downbeat on the Google parent, which has lately been weighed down by multiple antitrust cases and the ongoing threat from AI chatbots biting into its dominance in search. These overhangs have led to the stock falling 10% this year. We last trimmed our position in the tech giant back in December , and currently have a 2 rating on the stock with a price target of $210. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long GOOGL. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
A Waymo autonomous self-driving Jaguar taxi drives along a street on March 14, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
Waymo is headed to Washington, D.C., the latest expansion for the small, but promising Alphabet business.
