Waymo's custom Ojai chip brings robotaxi computing in-house

The Waymo Ojai robotaxi carries a custom chip rated above 1,000 TOPS, said to perform more than a trillion operations a second, processing data from 13 high-precision cameras and other sensors, the technology press reported on August 23, 2026. The custom-chip plan was separately reported on August 21.

Vertical integration reduces dependence on third-party chip plans and lets power, latency and redundancy be tuned to the specific autonomy stack.

TOPS is a vendor throughput measure, not a safety measure. Perception accuracy, fault tolerance, thermals, cybersecurity and the regulator-approved operating domain are what must be examined.