Waymo unveiled a custom 5 nanometre chip and an in-car computing architecture for its robotaxis. It said its ASIC processes camera, lidar and radar data in real time and can handle 1,000 trillion operations per second. Waymo is designing key sensor processing and fusion functions itself while sourcing CPUs, GPUs, accelerators, memory and storage from suppliers including AMD, Micron, Nvidia, Samsung Electronics, SanDisk, Socionext and TSMC. Contract sizes and volumes were not disclosed.

Chinese-made cars could enter the U.S. market faster than expected, driven by inflows via Mexico and Canada, Waymo’s adoption of China-built vehicles and price competitiveness. Waymo is importing Zeekr Ohai minivans made in China and fitting autonomous systems in Arizona despite 127.5 percent tariffs. Canada has begun importing up to 50,000 Chinese EVs a year under a new agreement. Executives and analysts cite persistent price gaps as a key factor.