What will Waymo or Alphabet report as the weekly paid ride figure at the time of Alphabet's Q4 2026 earnings call (expected late January/early February 2027)?

rationale:

The reported public figure for Waymo's weekly paid rides has stalled at roughly 500,000 for about seven months. Since CEO Sundar Pichai announced crossing the 500,000 mark in April 2026 Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results, Alphabet's Q2 earnings call and subsequent media coverage through late September have continued to cite the same baseline https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/alphabet-earnings-q2-2026/ Waymo and Zoox expand into more U.S. markets as ... Waymo is scaling fast: Here's what the fleet data shows. This plateau was corroborated by CPUC data, which showed California weekly trips falling from 330,400 in April to 314,700 in June Waymo's California Trips Are Falling, But Its Ambitions Are ..., coinciding with a nationwide pause in freeway rides starting May 21. Even before the pause, monthly volume gains in California had already shown signs of decelerating in early 2026 Is Waymo's Growth in California Flattening?.

Despite the summer stagnation, significant supply and geographic expansion drivers are now active and poised to push volumes higher through the end of the year. Waymo closed a $5 billion term loan in October to accelerate deployment https://waymo.com/blog/2026/10/waymo-closes-5-billion-debt-financing/ and has aggressively expanded its operational footprint. Since August, service has opened to the public or rolled out broadly in Houston, Denver, San Diego, Tampa, Las Vegas, and San Antonio. Furthermore, the active fleet is scaling: Waymo is on pace to integrate roughly 5,100 new Ojai vehicles into the US by year-end Waymo is scaling fast: Here's what the fleet data shows Waymo is scaling fast: Here's what the fleet data shows, providing the necessary supply to handle these new markets. Robust recent vehicle deployments and the low probability of near-term deployment freezes support somewhat higher expectations across the lower and middle portions of the distribution .

In February 2026, Waymo management set an ambitious target of exceeding 1 million paid rides per week by the end of the year Waymo eyes 1 million paid rides per week as expansion ... Waymo Pushes Deeper Into America—with No One Behind .... At historical utilization rates of roughly 125 rides per vehicle per week (500,000 rides across a 4,000-vehicle fleet), achieving 1 million rides would require an active, heavily utilized fleet of around 8,000 cars. While the influx of new Ojai deliveries makes this theoretically possible, newly opened cities and freshly deployed vehicles take time to ramp up to peak efficiency. Evaluating the target alongside the financial flow-through effects on Alphabet's broader operational scaling and compensation costs supports slightly higher median and upper-quartile expectations. Consequently, hitting the 1 million milestone in time for the late January / early February 2027 earnings call is plausible but represents a clear bull-case outcome, slightly above the 90th percentile.

Ultimately, Alphabet’s corporate reporting habits will dictate the exact figure cited on the Q4 call. Waymo heavily favors communicating round milestones—such as 600,000, 750,000, or 1 million—and often uses conservative "more than X" phrasing that lags actual real-time operational volume. Factoring in the time required to absorb recent capacity injections, alongside traditionally weak seasonal demand in late December and January, 750,000 paid rides per week is the median estimate, with 640,000 at the 25th percentile and 860,000 at the 75th percentile. The downside risk remains that Alphabet simply repeats a stale, lower benchmark if vehicle ramp-ups face delays or unexpected safety pauses emerge, placing the 10th percentile at 550,000, while successful scaling close to the stated target puts the 90th percentile at 980,000.