If you're keeping score in the autonomous vehicle race, things look pretty grim for Tesla Inc. (TSLA) right now. Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management and veteran tech analyst, put it bluntly on Wednesday: if this were a basketball game, Alphabet Inc.'s (GOOG) Waymo would be up 50-2.
That's not just analyst trash talk. The numbers back it up. Waymo is running a fully driverless commercial ride-hailing service across five U.S. cities with an estimated fleet of about 2,500 vehicles, delivering roughly 450,000 paid rides per week. These aren't test rides or supervised experiments. People are actually using Waymo to get around.
The Current State of Play
Tesla's robotaxi program, by comparison, looks like it's still in warm-ups. The company is running an estimated 50 vehicles, mostly in supervised mode, in Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area. Weekly rides are estimated in the low thousands. It's the difference between a commercial operation and an extended testing phase.
Munster's comments came as Waymo is reportedly out raising money at a $110 billion post-money valuation, seeking to bring in $15 billion. That kind of capital raise signals a company shifting from "does this work?" mode to "how big can we make this?" mode.
According to Munster, Waymo's progress really accelerated in 2025 as it moved from pilot programs into a scaling phase. The company has surpassed 150 million fully autonomous miles driven and has been expanding service areas to include freeways and airport access in several markets. Waymo isn't asking whether the technology works anymore. They're focused on efficiency and scale.
Tesla's Path Forward
Here's where it gets interesting, though. Munster isn't calling the game over. He emphasized that this race is still in its early stages, with Tesla "poised to make a run" as it works through technical and regulatory challenges.
The key word there is regulatory. Munster wrote that regulatory approval is the primary obstacle for Tesla's robotaxi ambitions. If the company's ongoing test of vehicles operating without a safety driver in Austin goes well, "the path to turning on new cities will be easy."
That's the spoiler alert Munster is talking about. Tesla might be way behind right now, but the company has a history of moving fast once it figures something out. The question is whether it can clear the regulatory hurdles and scale up before Waymo locks in too much of the market.
On Thursday, Tesla shares closed at $467.26, dropping 4.62% during the day, and were up 0.85% in after-hours trading. Alphabet (GOOG) shares were down 3.14%, closing at $298.06, and up 0.42% overnight.
So yes, Waymo is winning big right now. But anyone who's watched Elon Musk's companies over the years knows that being behind early doesn't necessarily mean staying behind. The robotaxi race might look like a blowout at halftime, but there's still a lot of game left to play.
