Uber and Waymo end robotaxi partnership in Phoenix
Uber $UBER and Alphabet Waymo $GOOGL ended their Phoenix robotaxi partnership in May, the city they first paired up in back in 2023. Waymo now runs those cars through its own app, and Uber says it is lining up a new autonomous partner. In their original market, allies are turning
Uber $UBER and Alphabet's $GOOGL Waymo have ended their robotaxi partnership in Phoenix, the city where the two first joined forces in 2023. The arrangement, which let Uber riders be matched with Waymo's driverless cars, wound down in May after hundreds of thousands of autonomous trips. Waymo has moved those vehicles into its own Phoenix fleet, where customers now book them directly through the Waymo app, and Uber has said it is preparing to launch a new autonomous-vehicle partner in the city without naming it yet. The split is limited for now. Waymo rides remain available through Uber in Austin and Atlanta, where the companies run much larger joint fleets. But unwinding the relationship in their original market underscores an awkward truth about the two firms: they both depend on each other and compete directly as autonomous ride-hailing scales. Uber wants to be the demand layer that any robotaxi operator plugs into, while Waymo increasingly wants to own the rider relationship itself. The Phoenix change shows each testing how much it needs the other. It also lands at a sensitive moment for the sector, after Waymo recalled nearly 3,900 of its vehicles in the US over a software issue that could send a car into a closed freeway work zone. For riders, the immediate effect is simple: in Phoenix, the Waymo app is now the way to hail those cars.