Tokyo is about to get a new fleet of self driving cars.

‍What’s happening:‍

• Waymo has announced plans to officially begin testing their autonomous vehicles in Tokyo for the first time ever
  

Why it matters:‍

• This is the first time Waymo will have ever operated outside of the United States of America and represents a larger paradigm shift about the future of autonomous vehicles
  
• Autonomous vehicles and self driving technology have continued to come into focus in the public markets, with WeRide (NASDAQ: WRD) and Pony AI (NASDAQ: PONY) both just recently debuting onto the Nasdaq
  

Going deeper:‍

• Waymo has been quickly expanding throughout the United States, recently launching test routes in Miami, Los Angeles, Austin and Atlanta
  
• Other large publicly traded companies besides Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) have been deepening their bets on self driving cars too, including Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) unveiling their new fully autonomous vehicle prototypes and Uber (NASDAQ: UBER) previously rolling out a new partnership with Cruise for ride sharing

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