What happened
Waymo will start breaking away from Uber in Austin and Atlanta in January 2028, co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg News published Wednesday. From then on, riders in the two cities will be able to book a Waymo robotaxi directly through Waymo's own app, the way riders do in the company's other markets.
Uber told TechCrunch on Wednesday that it still plans to host Waymo vehicles on its own app for as long as the two companies agree. Uber also told Bloomberg that it was Waymo's idea not to add a direct robotaxi booking option inside the Uber app.
The confirmation settles months of speculation. The Financial Times reported earlier this year that Waymo was looking for a way out of its Uber deal, which was set to run until May 2028. Mawakana's comments now put a date on the split: January 2028, about four months before that contract was due to expire.
Why it matters
Waymo first teamed up with Uber because the ride-hail giant offered scale, Mawakana said. But the setup left riders guessing. Open the Uber app in Austin or Atlanta and request a ride, and you could get a Waymo robotaxi or a human-driven car. Mawakana called that experience "a little bit of a crapshoot."
"It's important for us to have that relationship with the rider," Mawakana said. "We've gotten that feedback from the riders in those markets."
The split is also a sign of how far the robotaxi business has come. Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving unit, no longer needs Uber's app to reach riders in two of its markets. It can bring customers to its own app, keep the rider relationship, and control the experience end to end. That shift comes as [Alphabet's heavy spending on AI draws close investor scrutiny](/article/ai-spending-boom-shows-cracks-as-big-tech-burns-cash), and as its Google unit faces its own pressure after [losing $500 billion in market value in a single day](/article/google-loses-500-billion-ai-search-ad-revenue) as AI search weighed on ad revenue.
The two companies already parted ways in Phoenix earlier this year, where Waymo now runs its own service. Austin and Atlanta were the last cities where Waymo's robotaxis were available only through Uber.
What happens next
For now, nothing changes for riders. The split starts in January 2028, more than a year away, and the current arrangement runs until then. Uber says it expects to keep hosting Waymo vehicles while the two companies agree, so riders in Austin and Atlanta may still see Waymo cars in the Uber app for a time after Waymo's own app launches there.
The bigger question is what Uber does next in those cities. Uber has lined up a roster of other autonomous vehicle partners, and it has argued for a model where riders can be matched with either a human driver or an autonomous vehicle. Waymo's exit will test whether the biggest robotaxi operator can fill its cars on its own, without the biggest ride-hail app behind it.
