The Band of the Coldstream Guards (Henry Nicholls/Getty Images)

Google’s Waymo plans to launch autonomous rides in London next year

This marks the company’s second international expansion after Tokyo.

10/15/25 5:00AM

Google’s autonomous ride-hailing service, Waymo, is heading to London, where it plans to begin offering rides to the public next year.

Waymo said it will start testing vehicles with trained safety drivers behind the wheel in the “coming weeks.” It’s not the only autonomous ride-hailing company racing to break into London: Uber and UK-based autonomous tech company Wayve this summer announced their intention to partner to offer rides there.

The announcements follow the UK government’s push to fast-track autonomous pilot programs into the spring of 2026, up from late 2027. Firms will be allowed to “pilot small scale ‘taxi- and bus-like’ services without a safety driver for the first time” before a potential wider rollout when the full Automated Vehicles Act becomes law in the second half of 2027, according to the Department of Transport.

“Boosting the AV sector will increase accessible transport options alongside bringing jobs, investment, and opportunities to the UK,” Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander said in Waymo’s press release. Waymo also touted that its vehicles, Jaguar I-PACEs, are part of an “iconic British brand.”

Waymo didn’t say how many vehicles would be available to the public at launch, but it said it would scale up operations in conjunction with the government’s guidelines and approval processes.

Customers will use Waymo’s app to hail rides. Waymo has partnered again with Moove for fleet management.

London will be Waymo’s second international market besides Tokyo, where it’s currently testing.

Waymo is currently the largest autonomous ride-hailing service in the US, where it operates in five cities with plans to expand to another six next year. One of its main competitors in the US is Tesla, which is currently operating about 30 robotaxis in Austin with a person in the passenger’s seat.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5