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Waymo history
Waymo company history timeline
Google's development of self-driving technology began on January 17, 2009, at the company's secretive Google X lab run by co-founder Sergey Brin.
Project Chauffeur ran for almost two years undetected, road testing with seven vehicles before the New York Times revealed their existence on October 9, 2010.
Starting in 2010, lawmakers in various states expressed concerns over how to regulate the emerging technology.
In 2011, Google quietly acquired Levandowski's technology - the nucleus of Google's self-driving car project, via his two companies, 510 Systems, co-founded alongside Pierre-Yves Droz and Andrew Schultz, and Anthony's Robots for an estimated $20 million.
A Toyota Prius modified with Google's experimental driverless technology was licensed by the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in May 2012.
By 2012, they added a Lexus RX450h to its fleet and announced it had more than 300,000 self-driven miles.
In late May 2014, Google revealed a new prototype of its driverless car, which had no steering wheel, gas pedal, or brake pedal, being 100% autonomous.
In August 2015, Google hired former Hyundai Motor executive, John Krafcik, as CEO. In fall 2015, Google provided "the world's first fully driverless ride on public roads" to a legally blind friend of principal engineer Nathaniel Fairfield.
In December, they unveiled a fully functioning prototype that they planned to test on San Francisco Bay Area roads beginning in early 2015.
Since becoming CFO of Alphabet in 2015, Ruth Porat has done much to reign in the once free-spending ways of the companies under the holding company’s umbrella.
By the end of 2015, Project Chauffeur had driven more than a million self-driven miles.
For comparison, the acquisition of Cruise Automation by General Motors in March 2016 was reported at just over $500 million, and Uber's acquisition of Otto in August 2016 was for $680 million.
In December 2016, the project was renamed Waymo and became a new start-up company that is part of Alphabet.
At the end of last year, the Waymo team announced on November 7, 2017, “Starting now, Waymo's fully self-driving vehicles—our safest, most advanced vehicles on the road today—are test-driving on public roads, without anyone in the driver's seat.”
Along with hitting the road with no drivers behind the seat in 2017, Waymo also added the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan to its fleet.
The Financial Times is now reporting that the number is $30 billion, still a huge figure for a company with barely any business, but a fraction of what was expected in 2018.
In April 2019, Waymo announced plans for vehicle assembly in Detroit at the former American Axle & Manufacturing plant, bringing between 100 and 400 jobs to the area.
Waymo CEO John Krafcik at the opening event of the 2019 Frankfurt Auto Show in September 2019.
In May 2020, Waymo raised an additional $750 million, bringing their total outside investment to $3 billion.
In July 2020, the company announced an exclusive partnership with auto manufacturer Volvo to integrate Waymo's self-driving technology into Volvo's vehicles.
In April 2021, John Krafcik stepped down as CEO and was replaced by two co-CEOs: Waymo's COO Tekedra Mawakana and CTO Dmitri Dolgov.
Waymo raised $2.5 billion in a second funding round in June 2021.
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Zippia gives an in-depth look into the details of Waymo, including salaries, political affiliations, employee data, and more, in order to inform job seekers about Waymo. The employee data is based on information from people who have self-reported their past or current employments at Waymo. The data on this page is also based on data sources collected from public and open data sources on the Internet and other locations, as well as proprietary data we licensed from other companies. Sources of data may include, but are not limited to, the BLS, company filings, estimates based on those filings, H1B filings, and other public and private datasets. While we have made attempts to ensure that the information displayed are correct, Zippia is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of this information. None of the information on this page has been provided or approved by Waymo. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of Waymo and its employees or that of Zippia.
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