The Co-CEOs Steering Waymo Into the Future

In 2009, Google launched a quiet experiment: could a car drive itself across 100 uninterrupted miles of public road? Months later, it had. That experiment became the Google Self-Driving Car Project, which became Waymo. Today, under the joint leadership of Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov, it has become the world's first and most mature commercial autonomous ride-hailing service.

Waymo One now operates across San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta, with Tokyo on the horizon. Riders hail fully driverless Jaguar I-PACEs through an app, with no safety driver behind the wheel. The company has logged tens of millions of fully autonomous miles on public roads, a number that grows every day. And yet, Mawakana and Dolgov will tell you they're still at the very beginning.

"Every year, 1.4 million lives are lost to traffic crashes around the world. The status quo is not acceptable."

That statistic, 1.4 million lives lost annually to road crashes, sits at the center of Waymo's mission. It's not a marketing line. It's the organizing principle of the entire company. "We're committed to holding safety to a higher standard," Waymo's mission statement reads. "Because when we do, we make space for people to get around in a whole new way."

Two Leaders, One Mission

Tekedra Mawakana brings a background in law, policy, and global operations to the role. Before becoming co-CEO, she served as Waymo's Chief Operating Officer, overseeing the commercial launch of Waymo One and building the partnerships with Uber, DoorDash, Lyft's Flexdrive, and automotive giants Hyundai and Jaguar that underpin the company's expansion. She is one of the most prominent Black women leading a major technology company, and she carries that visibility with intention.

Dmitri Dolgov, meanwhile, is one of the original architects of the technology itself. A roboticist and engineer by training, he joined the Google self-driving car project at its inception and has spent nearly two decades refining what Waymo calls the Waymo Driver, the company's proprietary autonomous system, which it describes as "the world's most experienced driver." Where Mawakana shapes the business and the brand, Dolgov shapes the machine.

The Long Game

Autonomous vehicles have been "five years away" for the better part of two decades. Waymo is the company that actually got there, but Mawakana and Dolgov are careful not to declare victory. The real challenge, they've said repeatedly, isn't proving the technology works in a controlled environment. It's scaling it: to new cities, new road conditions, new weather patterns, new regulatory frameworks, and new rider expectations.

In June 2026, Waymo launched Waymo Premier, an elevated rider tier offering priority access and a more refined in-vehicle experience. It's a signal that the company is no longer just proving a concept. It's building a brand. And with Mawakana and Dolgov at the helm, the bet is that the world's most trusted driver will eventually become the world's most used one.