If I were Google, I'd be investing billions...: Vinod Khosla on tech giant's robotaxi startup Waymo

'Writing has been on the wall. Self-driving will surely win over human driving,' Vinod Khosla said, praising Google's self-driving car startup, Waymo. (Image credit: X, AFP)

Prominent venture capitalist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems in San Francisco, Vinod Khosla, believes that Google's self-driving car company has the potential to become bigger than the tech giant's primary search business.

"If I were Google I'd be investing tens of billions of dollars per year to entrench myself before others caught up. Maybe a larger market than search!" Khosla commented on X along with data showing Waymo's fast-growing share in San Francisco. "Writing has been on the wall. Self-driving will surely win over human driving. Better consumer experience, far lower cost, more scalability and predictability."

Recent estimates show Waymo's impressive capture of the San Francisco ride-share market. In just twenty months, its share has jumped from almost zero to an estimated 27 percent by April 2025, the Times of India reported. This makes Waymo's self-driving service now earn more money in gross bookings than Lyft, and it's set to overtake Uber within the next 12 months. Recently, the company announced that it was delivering about 250,000 autonomous rides per week, up from less than 10,000 rides per week less than two years ago.

Last July, Google’s parent company Alphabet has channelled in $5 billion into Waymo to develop robotaxis. The tech giant has not given up on the idea of delivering “world-leading self-driving technology”, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat had said last year. He added that the company’s investment of $5 billion into Waymo "is consistent with enabling Waymo to build the world's leading self-driving technology.”

In March, Uber tied up with Waymo to put self-driving cabs on the roads in the US. The app-based cab aggregator announced that users can now book a Waymo cab exclusively on its platform in Austin, Texas in the US, and the offering will soon be rolled out in Atlanta, Georgia as well, apart from Phoenix, Arizona.

Alphabet’s Waymo has been into developing self-driving cars for more than a decade now. A Google car project in the early years, Waymo was given full autonomy in 2016. Waymo conducts its business through ride-hailing services in Los Angeles (where it began its rides in 2024), San Francisco and Phoenix, and intends to expand its services to Austin, Texas.

Read more: From jobs to dates: How San Francisco's tech workers are using robot taxis to leave handwritten notes