Waymo builds its own chip for its robotaxis, cutting its reliance on Nvidia

Waymo built its own chip for its robotaxis, cutting its reliance on Nvidia. Alphabet's robotaxi subsidiary Waymo has developed a custom chip for its self-driving taxis, Bloomberg reports. The chip is already running in the company's latest generation of vehicles.

Waymo says the chip processes sensor data faster and runs the AI models that help its robotaxis understand and react to their surroundings. Until now, the company relied on chips from Nvidia and AMD.

The custom chip delivers more than 1,000 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) and is manufactured by TSMC on a 5-nanometer process, according to the company. That puts it on par with Nvidia's current autonomous driving systems. The move is meant to bring costs down. Waymo is installing the chip in its new robotaxi, which it's building with Chinese manufacturer Zeekr.

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