Waymo runs over 3,000 driverless cars across at least 10 US cities. Nuro, founded by Google self-driving veterans, is betting that second place is the better position.
Nuro pivoted from delivery robots to robotaxis in 2024, then secured a deal with Uber and Lucid to deploy tens of thousands of vehicles nationwide, pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. The Lucid partnership matters: purpose-built hardware from a known EV manufacturer changes the cost and scale calculus entirely.
The full interview with Nuro CEO Dave Ferguson is worth reading for how he frames the second-mover argument, specifically what Waymo had to build from scratch that Nuro now gets for free, and what the Uber distribution deal actually means for deployment speed.
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