This is FutureSearch's comprehensive forecast of Waymo's technical and financial progress over the next year and beyond. (Disclosure: I worked at Waymo in 2019-2020 as a System Engineer, but these forecasts are based entirely on public information as of May 2026.)
My central estimate is that weekly paid rides reach 775,000 at the Q4 2026 median (p10 500,000, p90 1.15 million), short of co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana's one-million target stated in February (Bloomberg). Waymo sat at 500,000 weekly rides at Q1 earnings (CNBC).
I predict first paid public ride in Waymo's new car, the Ojai, arrives around October 1, 2026 at the median (p10 July 20, p90 March 15, 2027). FY2026 Other Bets operating loss lands at $8.5B at the median, up from about $5.5B in 2025. The first paid driverless ride in London arrives around August 2027 at the median, with a p90 stretching to September 2028.
I also forecast the outcomes of major regulation in the next 12 months, giving an 18% probability of formal NHTSA enforcement before mid-2027, 15% probability of US federal action restricting Ojai imports before June 30, 2027, 10% probability of federal AV legislation reaching the US President's desk before January 3, 2027, and 5% probability of Alphabet breaking out Waymo as a separate reporting segment before mid-2027.
Overall, I think Waymo's $126 billion implied valuation from their February 2026 fundraise modestly overvalues the company.
The chart above plots Waymo's weekly paid rides through Q1 2026 (500,000, from Q1 earnings) with the Q4 2026 forecast fan, and marks co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana's stated one-million target (Bloomberg) for reference. Fleet math sets the ceiling on that target. Waymo's current utilization is about 20 trips per vehicle per day, so 500,000 weekly rides take roughly 3,600 active vehicles, which matches the fleet's actual size. One million weekly rides need around 7,200 vehicles. Waymo has been adding 265 to 300 vehicles per month (Business Insider). At that pace, the fleet hits 5,900 to 6,000 by year-end, enough for about 840,000 weekly rides and short of the million.
The target requires faster Ojai deliveries, higher per-vehicle utilization, or both. The theoretical utilization ceiling sits around 40 trips per day (Robonomics), so headroom exists. The question is whether Waymo's operations team can execute against it under the current load.
The current load is intense. Waymo has halted service in five cities this month because the cars keep driving into floodwater (TechCrunch). NHTSA is running two investigations, one of which involves a child struck near a school in Santa Monica. The California Public Utilities Commission has suspended Waymo's 6th-generation deployment authorization through at least June 27 (CPUC), which means California cannot host a public Ojai launch before late July at the earliest. Waymo's own public messaging on Ojai shifted from "welcoming riders this summer" in February to "when we are ready, we will certainly open our doors" in April (SF Examiner). That rhetorical drift is the public version of an internal schedule slip.
My forecast for the first paid public Ojai ride puts the median at October 1, 2026, with a p10 of July 20 and a p90 of March 15, 2027. That date matters more than any other on the list.
The Ojai is the gating factor on Waymo's cost structure. Each Jaguar I-PACE in the current fleet costs $150,000 to $200,000 outfitted. Each Ojai uses a Zeekr-built base vehicle that costs around $32,000 and carries 42% fewer sensors (TechCrunch). A robotaxi pencils out to a one-year vehicle payback at $125,000 and 30 trips per day (per the framework cited in Contrary Research). At $32,000, the payback drops to three or four months. That gap separates a capital money pit from a viable business.
The Ojai's cost advantage carries a geopolitical price tag. Each unit is built in Ningbo by Zeekr (a Geely subsidiary), shipped as a glider chassis to Mesa, Arizona, and outfitted with Waymo's sensor stack on US soil (Detroit News). Senator Bernie Moreno told Waymo's Chief Safety Officer at a Commerce Committee hearing in February that it "seems like you're getting in bed with China" (Business Insider). Moreno and Senator Slotkin then introduced the Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026 to ban Chinese-linked vehicle imports (NBC News).
My probability of a US federal action restricting Ojai imports before June 30, 2027 is 15%. That sits below the FutureSearch model's 20% because Commerce gave Geely-owned Volvo an exemption to keep importing connected vehicles the same week I finalized the forecast (CNBC). Approving imports from Waymo's vehicle supplier's parent company is not the move of an administration about to slam the door.
The hedge is the Hyundai Ioniq 5 built at Hyundai's Metaplant in Georgia (Telemetry), but shipments do not begin until Q4 2026 against an order of 50,000 units over multiple years. A China disruption inside the next twelve months would catch Waymo in the worst possible window. The risk hides in the tails. It does not show up in the quarterly numbers.
The chart above shows the four binary regulatory forecasts I track. NHTSA enforcement (18%) is the highest-probability one, and it is where Waymo carries the most pressure today: two open NHTSA investigations, three voluntary recalls in 18 months, and the May service halts. The 18% probability of formal enforcement (a consent order, civil penalty, or mandated recall) before mid-2027 is the central number on the chart.
The Cruise precedent is the right calibration. NHTSA issued a $1.5 million consent order against Cruise in 2024 for concealing data about a pedestrian dragging incident (NHTSA). The underlying defect alone would not have triggered enforcement. Waymo contacted NHTSA the same day as the Santa Monica child-strike incident (Waymo). I see no public evidence of concealment.
Two structural factors push the enforcement number down. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is advancing an AV framework plan (NHTSA), and NHTSA's investigative capacity has shrunk under recent staffing reductions (Foley). Investigations run 18 months or longer, so the current ones may not conclude inside the resolution window.
The school-bus investigation is the most dangerous one. The December 2025 voluntary recall was supposed to fix bus-passing behavior; violations continued into 2026, and NHTSA sent a second document request in May, the standard escalation marker. A child struck near a school generates congressional pressure NHTSA cannot wait out.
Federal AV legislation probably does not happen on this timeline. My probability of the SELF DRIVE Act or equivalent being signed before January 3, 2027 is 10%. The bill cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee on a 12-11 party-line vote (Smart Cities Dive). Its predecessor, the AV START Act, died in the Senate in 2018 after passing the House unanimously, killed by a coalition of labor, disability rights groups, trial lawyers, and state regulators. That coalition has not changed since.
The surface transportation reauthorization due September 30, 2026 is the most plausible legislative vehicle, but the current House version (the BUILD America 250 Act) only extends AV authority to FMCSA for commercial vehicles, not NHTSA for passenger vehicles (Holland & Knight). Adding passenger AV provisions would jeopardize the 62-2 committee vote the transportation bill enjoys today. Waymo spends the next 18 months operating inside a state-by-state regulatory patchwork.
London is Waymo's first international shot and probably its longest. The company has about 100 Jaguar I-PACEs testing with safety drivers across a 100-square-mile area (TechCrunch), targeting commercial driverless launch in Q4 2026. My forecast places the first paid driverless ride in London at a median of August 2027, with a p90 stretching to September 2028.
The UK's pilot application process opened on May 22, 2026 (UK government). No country has gone from "applications open" to commercial driverless service in under five months. Each operator needs a Vehicle Special Order from the Vehicle Certification Agency, an Automated Passenger Service permit from Transport for London, and a novel safety case review. The UK government's own published timeline for the permanent AV Act framework is H2 2027 (UK government). A Waymo vehicle driving into a police cordon in Harlesden in April (BBC) did not help Waymo's public-trust case. Baidu's Apollo Go and the UK's own Wayve are also competing for regulator attention, which lengthens the queue.
The chart above plots three date forecasts: the first paid public ride in the new Ojai vehicle (p50 October 1, 2026), the first paid driverless ride in London (p50 August 2027), and Other Bets crossing $1 billion per quarter (p50 December 2029). The Ojai and London forecasts are operational milestones. The Other Bets milestone is the financial threshold at which Waymo's segment becomes material in Alphabet's financials.
Alphabet does not break Waymo out as a separate reporting segment, so my forecast lives at the Other Bets level. My probability of Alphabet changing that before mid-2027 is 5%. The accounting math kills it: Other Bets' $411 million in quarterly revenue is below 0.4% of Alphabet's total, well under the ASC 280 10% threshold that mandates separation (SEC). Alphabet defended this aggregation to the SEC in 2017 and has every incentive to maintain it.
I forecast $8.5 billion of Other Bets operating loss for FY2026 at the median, up from about $5.5 billion in 2025. The Q1 run rate of $2.1 billion annualizes to $8.4 billion; the Q4 Google Fiber deconsolidation lowers the actual print.
My p10 of $7.2 billion assumes faster revenue scaling and cost discipline. My p90 of $10.5 billion includes another stock-based compensation true-up like the $2.1 billion charge Alphabet took in Q4 2025 (SEC) tied to Waymo's rising valuation.
The forecast I find most surprising is the date Other Bets revenue crosses $1 billion per quarter: my median is December 2029. That requires Waymo to grow ride revenue from $100-130 million per quarter today to $850-900 million per quarter, a 7-8x increase after netting out the loss of Verily and Google Fiber from the segment. At Waymo's recent annual doubling rate, that is a three-to-four year stretch.
Conservative analyst models push the timeline out further. Morgan Stanley projects $2.5 billion annual by 2030 (Morgan Stanley). TD Cowen has $6.1 billion in gross bookings by 2034 (Yahoo Finance). Sundar Pichai has been telling investors Waymo will become "meaningful in our financials" by 2027-2028 (CNBC). Meaningful revenue is visible by 2027-2028. Meaningful profit will not show up before 2029.
The competitive picture fortifies Waymo's position more than it threatens it. Tesla's robotaxi fleet stands at 25 unsupervised vehicles across Austin, Dallas, and Houston, with 14 logged crashes (Automotive World). Musk has deferred scaling to FSD V15, which Morgan Stanley projects takes Tesla to about 1,000 vehicles by year-end, around 3-4% of Waymo's current fleet.
Tesla's cost-per-mile advantage at $0.81 versus Waymo's roughly $1.40 (Morgan Stanley) matters at scale, and Tesla is years from that scale. Zoox sits further along but in the prove-the-tech phase. The more interesting dynamic is Baidu's Apollo Go: 22 cities globally, 250,000 weekly trips, partnerships with both Uber and Lyft for London. The geopolitical anxiety that drives Waymo's Ojai supply-chain risk is anxiety about the same Chinese AV capability Apollo Go demonstrates.
Pulling it together, my base case (40-50% probability) is that Waymo reaches 750,000 to 950,000 weekly rides by year-end 2026, falling short of the million. The Ojai enters public service in September or October. Safety incidents continue to create friction without triggering formal enforcement. London slips to mid-2027. The China supply chain holds. FY2026 Other Bets loss lands in the $8-9 billion range. Waymo grows fast and stays unprofitable, with the path to profitability visible and not yet reached.
The bull case (15-20%) is that the flooding behavior gets resolved cleanly, the school-bus pattern stops, Ojai launches in late summer, fleet expansion accelerates, the million-ride number hits, London launches on schedule, and federal AV legislation rides through on the transportation reauthorization. The Waymo narrative flips from "expensive experiment" to "inevitable platform" and the $126 billion valuation starts to look cheap.
The bear case (15-20%) is that a fatality or another child injury triggers NHTSA enforcement and political backlash. Ojai slips into 2027 under compounding software pressure. Ride growth stalls at 550,000 to 600,000. China import restrictions hit before the Ioniq 5 ramp covers the gap. FY2026 loss balloons past $10 billion. The Waymo IPO timeline slides past 2030.
The tail (5-10%) is multiple bear cases compounding at once. An incident with political fallout during the NHTSA investigations, Ojai supply-chain disruption, and federal legislation that imposes new operational restrictions on robotaxi operators. Waymo's growth reverses for the first time. The $126 billion valuation is least equipped to survive this scenario, and it is the scenario the current narrative most underprices.
It's clear that Waymo's prospects are not a technology question. Waymo has driven 200 million miles with no safety driver and provided more than 20 million paid rides. That settles the technology question. The open questions are industrial. Can the Ojai pipeline scale fast enough? Can Waymo's software teams fix flooding behavior while validating ODDs in six new cities? Can the political environment stay permissive while incidents accumulate? Can the China supply chain survive long enough for the Hyundai backup to take over? Conventional Waymo coverage treats it as a technology story and undercounts these. The unit economics at scale are compelling. The gauntlet between today and at scale is longer and bumpier than the $126 billion valuation implies.
Run this forecast yourself by connecting FutureSearch to Claude and asking it to refresh the numbers any time the news cycle moves.