Alphabet’s Waymo expands in San Francisco with Uber lease

Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit owned by Google parent Alphabet Inc., is taking more office space in San Francisco. 

The company is subleasing more than 48,000 square feet (4,460 square meters) at 555 Market Street in the city’s financial district from Uber Technologies Inc. Waymo already has space in the Bayview neighborhood, while Google has several offices in the city.

The new lease for Waymo is a vote of confidence for an office market that has been slower to rebound from the pandemic than other major U.S. cities, with technology employers embracing remote and hybrid work. While Google has maintained its space in San Francisco, many other tech companies have sought to offload millions of square feet they previously leased.

“We’re excited to expand into this new beautiful space right on Market Street,” Boris Sofman, the head of trucking and perception at Waymo, said in a statement Wednesday. “Our teams will return to the office in a variety of modes from full to hybrid to remote over months to come, and this new space will allow us to support not only our growing operations in San Francisco but also globally.”

Waymo, widely considered the technical leader in autonomous driving, has been offering fully driverless taxi rides in Arizona for the past year. Yet the company’s expansion elsewhere has moved slower than industry expectations and its earlier plans. 

In August, the company began opening taxi services to select passengers in San Francisco, but those rides will include a safety driver at the wheel. The company has also announced a partnership with J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. to work on autonomous trucking in Texas.

Alphabet was an early investor in Uber. But in 2017, Waymo sued Uber and accused the company of using trade secrets for its self-driving program taken from a Waymo engineer, Anthony Levandowski, who had moved to the ride-hailing company. 

The companies settled the following year, with Uber agreeing to pay Waymo $245 million.