Uber and Waymo just killed their exclusivity deal in Atlanta and Austin. The cars will show up on other platforms in 2028. That's two years from now. Financial journalists everywhere scrambled to explain why you should care about a press release concerning robotaxis that will maybe exist in cities you don't live in at a date nobody can predict with any accuracy.
The arrangement ends in 2028. Not today. Not next quarter. 2028. By then we'll have had three different AI bubbles, four new streaming services that immediately fail, and at least one crypto winter that wipes out your cousin Derek who keeps texting you about digital land ownership.
Waymo driverless rides will be available on platforms other than Uber. Thrilling stuff. Game-changing. The retail trader who just bought Uber calls based on this headline is currently Googling "what does exclusivity mean" and "can I get a refund on Robinhood."
Atlanta and Austin get the honor of hosting this historic non-event. Two cities. Two whole cities where in 730 days you might be able to order a driverless car from an app that isn't Uber. The strategic importance of this cannot be overstated, which is why I'm about to understate it completely.
Partnerships in the autonomous vehicle space are famously reliable and never collapse due to regulatory problems, technical failures, or the sudden realization that burning billions of dollars to eliminate a job that pays $15 an hour makes no economic sense whatsoever. This will definitely happen exactly as planned.
The announcement solves a problem nobody currently has and won't solve it until a year when most of the people trading on this news will have already blown up their accounts on something dumber.
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