Uber and Google's self-driving unit Waymo may be headed for a split, the Financial Times reported, according to investor commentary account Serenity, who says the shift confirms a view held for over a year. Serenity had argued that Uber's partnership with Waymo was a mistake from the start, since it effectively turned Uber into a distribution channel Google could use to scale its own robotaxi service before eventually competing directly. In Serenity's view, that risk has essentially been realized: Waymo, now positioned as Uber's own partner, looks set to become one of its most serious disruptors in ride-hailing. Serenity had previously flagged that other neutral players, such as Nebius's Avride, or a fully vertically integrated approach, would have made more sense for Uber's long-term positioning than tying its distribution to a company with its own robotaxi ambitions. The report adds a new wrinkle to how investors read Alphabet's self-driving bet: rather than a side project, Waymo increasingly looks like a business Alphabet could operate on its own terms, independent of the ride-hailing incumbents it once needed for scale. For Uber, the question shifts from whether Waymo helps fill its network to whether Waymo eventually competes with it directly for the same riders.
Why it matters · If Alphabet's self-driving unit no longer needs Uber's app to reach riders, one of the clearest bull cases for Uber's platform model, that its network is too valuable for rivals to bypass, gets a lot weaker, while Alphabet's case for owning robotaxi economics outright gets stronger.
Worth asking · Waymo started out as Uber's partner and now looks like it could become one of its biggest threats. Does this split rumor mean Uber misjudged its robotaxi strategy, or is Alphabet simply cashing in leverage it always had?