If you want to ride in a driverless Waymo in Austin or Atlanta, you can currently only do that via the Uber app thanks to an exclusive partnership between the two companies. That will change in 2028 because Waymo has decided to go solo in those two cities.

Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana told Bloomberg on Wednesday that the company will exit its partnership with Uber in Austin and Atlanta starting in January 2028. The reason? Mawakana said the Uber app doesn’t guarantee a driverless ride. You can enable autonomous rides via settings in the Uber app, but the chances of one showing up depend on how many Waymos are actually nearby. If there's no Waymo nearby, riders are matched with human drivers.

Uber offered to add a dedicated robotaxi ride option through its service so that customers would match with driverless cars more easily, but Waymo reportedly declined that.

“In the early days, we would partner because we didn’t have the scale,” Mawakana told the outlet. "...in that partnering, it was a little bit of a crapshoot," she added.

Customers were now demanding a more consistent experience, Mawakana said. That’s why, starting in January 2028, Waymos in Austin and Atlanta will operate the same way they’ve been operating in over two dozen other U.S. cities: via Waymo’s own dedicated app. With that, current partner Uber will also become a direct rival in those two cities.

The whole point of this partnership was to help Waymo scale and give riders exposure to its cutting-edge driverless technology.

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