AIBRIEF
Waymo told Uber it will run its own self driving ride hail app in Austin and Atlanta starting January 2028 in what would be a second city by city split after Phoenix earlier this year, the Financial Times reported.
Waymo has told Uber it plans to put its self-driving ride-hail cars on its own app in Austin and Atlanta starting in January 2028, the Financial Times reported, with Bloomberg independently confirming the story on July 24, 2026. Waymo did not respond to a request for comment.
The move would extend a Phoenix split earlier in 2026 into the two companies' largest shared markets. Uber says its contract covering Austin and Atlanta runs through May 2028, so Waymo's own app would launch while the Uber deal is still in force.
The friction between the two is now public on several fronts. Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli posted a video calling a Waymo incident in San Francisco "scary," and CEO Dara Khosrowshahi criticized robotaxi behavior in school zones and emergency situations on Uber's May 2026 earnings call without naming Waymo. The companies have also ended up on opposite sides of fresh policy fights over robotaxi regulations.
Waymo declined to confirm the breakup intent on the record, and the FT article is paywalled, so the framing as "mulling" rather than "decided" still fits. The next test of the pattern comes in January 2028, when Waymo plans to open its own app in Austin and Atlanta.