Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana says Waymo has reached 10M paid trips, doubling in the past five months, and that the company is not yet profitable
Context & Ripple Effects
Waymo's commercial ride volume had already moved from more than 50,000 weekly trips in May 2024 to more than 100,000 by August and above 200,000 by February 2025, a progression captured in its 200,000-plus weekly-ride milestone. The latest cumulative total extends that operating-scale arc while making clear that scale has not yet translated into profitability.
The story matters because paid-trip growth is becoming a more concrete measure of robotaxi adoption than autonomous miles alone. It also sets a baseline for Waymo's later stated ambition of more than 1 million paid weekly rides by the end of 2026.
First-order effects
- Waymo can point to faster paid-trip accumulation as evidence that its service is gaining use across its active markets.
- The company remains in investment mode: growing ride volume has not yet covered the costs of operating and expanding the service.
Second-order effects
- Waymo's ride-volume lead raises the performance bar for rival robotaxi offerings, particularly those operating with smaller fleets or greater human supervision.
- The lack of profitability keeps the commercial focus on utilization and operating efficiency, not simply adding service coverage or vehicles.
Third-order effects
- If paid rides continue to compound while profits lag, robotaxi competition will increasingly turn on whether operators can convert technical capability into repeatable unit economics.
- The sector may separate into operators able to finance a long scaling period and those whose deployment pace is constrained by the cost of reaching viable utilization.
The trend: Robotaxis are shifting from autonomy demonstrations toward a test of whether rapidly growing paid demand can support durable operating economics.