ted (not lasso) on Warpcast

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ted (not lasso) pfp

ted (not lasso)

Waymo closes "oversubscribed" $5.6B round to scale. Initial thoughts: 1. 100k robotaxi trips per week is now 10x YoY growth, and 2x in the last 3 months alone. Waymo began in 2009... consider how much work and patience (and capital) was required to set Waymo up for this type of growth. 2. Andrej Karpathy recently said that while Tesla has a software problem, Waymo has a hardware problem — which is the harder and more costly problem to solve. Waymo doesn't produce its own vehicles, but still costs them $200k to deploy a car with its third-party partners. <1000 cars deployed today. Meanwhile, Elon said on Tesla's earnings call they are producing 35k cars a week. It will be interesting to see how the round (and ongoing scale) shifts Waymo's unit economics and margins over time. 3. Alphabet led the round and probably owns ~80-90% of Waymo. I'm curious to know how much of the $5.6B is outside investment (does it even matter?).

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Dan Romero pfp

Not bullish on Waymo

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jim.base.eth pfp

Looks like A16z, Silverlake, and the usual suspects. https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/25/waymo-raises-5-6b-from-alphabet-a16z-silver-lake-and-more/

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Joe Blau 🎩 pfp

I did the onboarding at Uber ATG (self-driving) for two years explaining why we were getting into Self Driving. After the home, the next largest part of everyone's budget is transportation. Huge opportunity.

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Les Greys pfp

can you imagine if Waymo buys Tesla surplus and fits it with Waymo tech. At this stage it almost seemsly like tesla's will be cheaper than most of the cars they already use.

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Giuliano Giacaglia pfp

Giuliano Giacaglia

I recommend watching this interview with Dmitri. It covers a lot of their strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6RndtrwJKE

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GIGAMΞSH pfp

Do you know if they’ve said anything about this problem? https://warpcast.com/gigamesh/0x30c6cfc4

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jd 🌺 pfp

what are the odds Waymo winds up selling itself to Tesla or another auto maker

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Chinmay 🕹️🍿 pfp

Chinmay 🕹️🍿

I wonder if there is a discount for taking a robotaxi vs a drive-taxi? If that's the case, we can see more than 10x yoy growth in the early years.

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Alex pfp

@asenderling.eth

There's less than 1k Waymo's on the road today? I feel like I see them all the time, are they just in very limited markets?

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Garrett pfp

It seems that it's a lot easier to fix and scale software vs fix and scale hardware Tesla still feels like the likely winner here

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1dolinski pfp

took one yesterday, they're great already seeing like 5% of *driving* cars in SF be waymo if they can get cost per ride below uber and deploy a larger fleet will change social habits

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Michael Varde pfp

@michaelvarde.eth

I think the streets would be safer if all cars are self-driving or none of them are self-driving. This in-between time will inevitably result in collisions as humans struggle to predict robots and robots struggle to predict humans. That said, whatever results in less collisions, I’m here for it. 🤖🚕

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gFam.live (UrbanGladiator) pfp

gFam.live (UrbanGladiator)

I disagree with Karpathy's assessment. Tesla has both a software and hardware problem. It doesn't look like HW3 can do FSD, which is the majority of the vehicles on the road. Even with HW4 there are issues with FSD working in fog or bright glaring sunlight. Robotaxis won't be profitable if they don't work well in all weather scenarios.

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