Waymo Builds Custom Chip for Self-Driving Taxis

Waymo has developed its own custom chip for its self-driving taxis, reducing its reliance on Nvidia and AMD. The chip is already being used in the company's latest generation of vehicles, which process sensor data faster and run AI models that help understand and react to surroundings.

The new chip delivers over 1,000 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) and is manufactured by TSMC on a 5-nanometer process. This puts it on par with Nvidia's current autonomous driving systems.

Waymo built the custom chip to bring costs down, and it will be installed in its new robotaxi being developed with Chinese manufacturer Zeekr.