Uber rival Lyft has seen its stock rise following the announcement of its partnership with autonomous car company Waymo.
The new partnership will see riders be able to hail Waymo rides in Nashville through the Waymo app, and in late 2026, riders will be able to use the Lyft app to match with a Waymo vehicle.
It will also leverage Lyft’s proprietary integrated fleet management services through its Flexdrive subsidiary, providing end-to-end fleet management.
“Waymo has proven that its autonomous technology works at scale. When combined with Lyft's customer-obsession and world-class fleet management capabilities, it's two great tastes that go great together,” Lyft CEO David Risher said.
“Lyft’s extensive fleet management capabilities through Flexdrive make them an ideal partner for expanding to Nashville,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said.
Following this announcement, Lyft’s share price rose 13.3% during Wednesday's United States trade, bringing Lyft’s share price to its highest point since May 2022.
Governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, said he looks forward to seeing Waymo’s launch in the state.
"By leveraging private sector technologies like Waymo's fully autonomous vehicles, we're exploring possibilities we couldn't achieve on our own, and further accelerating economic growth,” he said.
This comes eight years after Waymo first partnered with Lyft rival Uber in 2017.
The autonomous car company owned by Alphabet still has a similar relationship with Uber in Austin, where there are around 100 Waymo taxis. Unlike the Lyft partnership, Austin riders cannot hail rides through the Waymo app.
Waymo also services Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco, Atlanta and Austin and plans to bring its service to Washington, Miami and New York City next year.
Both Lyft and Uber have also sought their own deal to bring autonomous cars to their platforms without Waymo.
This includes Lyft launching a limited robotaxi service with Michigan-based startup May Mobility this month, and Iber announcing a US$300 million investment in EV automaker Lucid to bring robotaxis to its platform.
