Placing Your Bets in the Robot Race
Of course, Waymo isn’t the only player in this high-stakes game. Its parent, Alphabet, has been playing the long game, pouring billions into a meticulous, safety-first approach using a suite of expensive sensors. On the other side of the ring, you have Tesla, taking a bolder, camera-reliant path and effectively using its entire customer fleet as a vast data-gathering network. It’s a classic tortoise versus hare scenario, and it’s still far from clear which strategy will win out.
Then you have the unsung heroes, the companies that make the digital eyes and brains for these vehicles. The sensor makers, the chip designers, the computing platform specialists. These are the "picks and shovels" of the autonomous gold rush. They could prosper regardless of which car brand ultimately dominates the roads, making them a rather interesting proposition for a savvy investor.