Waymo co-CEO Dolgov on 20 years of self-driving and why the last 1% is hardest
adityaag · x · 2026-10-09
In an SPC conversation, Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov traces his journey from the Stanford DARPA team to founding member of Google's self-driving project — nearly 20 years on a problem most said would take 5.
Key points:
- 2009 milestones had nothing to do with building a product — the goal was to learn and understand the problem first.
- How a fleet of Waymos coordinates, and how the AI system is structured around Driver, Simulator, and Critic.
- Adopting new AI breakthroughs without breaking the product.
- Why the last 1% of autonomous driving is so hard.
- Where startups should build in Physical AI, and whether the Waymo Driver can become a general physical AI agent.
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