Waymo debuts custom 5nm chip for its 13-camera Ojai robotaxi

Waymo has unveiled the custom silicon at the center of its next-generation Ojai robotaxi: a 5nm ASIC that intercepts raw camera and sensor data before it reaches the main autonomy stack. In TechCrunch Mobility, Kirsten Korosec reports the chip delivers "more than 1,000 TOPS (trillions of operations per second)," a figure that puts it in the same performance neighborhood as Nvidia's DRIVE AGX Thor, the automotive processor Waymo's rivals have been building around.

The role Waymo describes for the part is unglamorous but load-bearing. The Ojai carries 13 high-fidelity cameras, and the ASIC is "designed to handle the massive influx of raw data before it reaches the core 'brain' of the self-driving system," according to the company. Waymo also argues the chip "is a critical piece of a system that can react fast and safely in complex, high-density environments," singling out cities.

The named supplier list is unusually broad for a chip disclosure: AMD, Micron, Nvidia, Samsung, Sandisk, Socionext, and TSMC. Nvidia appearing there while Waymo simultaneously benchmarks the ASIC against Nvidia's Thor is a piece of coopetition few chip reveals bother to spell out.

The move fits a familiar Alphabet playbook: build the accelerator yourself, TPU-style, when the economics of buying merchant silicon stop working. Korosec frames it as part of Waymo's vertical integration strategy, aimed at making the Ojai cheaper to build, operate and maintain across its current markets in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco. It arrives days after Nevada cleared 8,000 robotaxi permits in Clark County for Waymo, Tesla and Uber, one more market where cheaper hardware could compound.