Industry AI Minute Newsroom 2026-08-22

Waymo has quietly built its own chip, and it is already riding around in the cars

Alphabet's Waymo has designed a custom application-specific chip for its robotaxis and it is already in production in the latest generation of its hardware, Bloomberg reported on 20 August. The part runs above 1,000 TOPS, which puts it level with Nvidia's current autonomous-driving systems on that particular measure, and is manufactured on Taiwan Semiconductor's 5-nanometre process. Waymo says the chip speeds up sensor data processing and the models the vehicle uses to read and respond to what is around it, while cutting power draw and per-vehicle hardware cost. The robotaxi Waymo recently launched with Zeekr, the electric-vehicle arm of China's Geely, is being fitted with it. The move reduces Waymo's reliance on suppliers including Nvidia and AMD.

Why it mattersWaymo's hard problem has not been whether the driving works; it has been whether each car can be built cheaply enough to put tens of thousands of them on the road. Compute is a large line in that bill, and designing the chip yourself is how you take it out. It also removes a supplier's margin and a supplier's roadmap from the critical path — the same logic that has Anthropic hiring chip designers this week. Custom silicon is no longer something only the largest cloud providers do.

#Robotics

✓ Verified · 3 sources

Waymo has quietly built its own chip, and it is already riding around in the cars

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