Waymo and Wing Signal Other Bets Are Growing

Like the Alphabet NASDAQ: GOOGL continues to make headlines with the acceleration of Google Cloud, the progress of Gemini, and the creation of a massive AI infrastructure, one part of the company is rarely mentioned: Other Bets. It's home to Alphabet's moonshot ventures, experimental projects that don't yet contribute significantly to revenue but have the potential to reshape entire industries.

And in the past week, two of those bets have brought news that suggests the sector deserves more attention from investors than it's getting.

Wing Becomes Real Business With Silence

On June 8, Wing, Alphabet's drone delivery subsidiary, announced the expansion to seven more US cities through its partnership with Walmart. NASDAQ: WMT.

The new markets include Memphis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Salt Lake City, bringing consolidated service to nearly 20 US markets.

The expansion is part of a broader plan to build a drone delivery network that includes more than 270 Walmart locations next year, reaching more than 40 million Americans, or about 10% of the American population.

The numbers behind the program suggest that this is no longer an experiment. Wing has completed over one million commercial deliveries. Its drones fly up to 60 mph and deliver within 30 minutes. And according to the company, its top 25% customers use the service three times a week. That's the habit, the repeated use, the real kind of engagement that turns a new thing into a solid business.

Notably, Alphabet recently tied a portion of CEO Sundar Pichai's compensation to Wing and Waymo's performance for the first time, a clear sign that these jobs are now expected to deliver.

Waymo Adds Layer of Recurring Revenue

A day later, on June 11, Waymo launched its first-ever membership program. Waymo Premier, a $29.99-per-month, invite-only tier, offers priority pickup, 10% cash back on each trip in the form of ride credits, early access to new cities, and up to 5 free cancellations per month. The program first launched in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, Waymo's three longest-running markets, with tens of thousands of invitations from the service's most frequent riders.

Membership movement is important because of what it shows about the scale. Waymo doubled its paid rides to nearly 500,000 per week in less than a year and aims for one million weekly trips by the end of the year. The company raised $16 billion in a $126 billion round earlier this year to fund expansion into more than 20 cities, including its first international markets in Tokyo and London.

In essence, it's Uber's NYSE: UBER A comparable membership program, Uber One, reached 50 million members and drove half of the company's total bookings in the first quarter. If Waymo Premier follows even a fraction of that path, it adds a layer of recurring revenue on top of an already rapidly consolidating ride-hailing business.

Part Is Still A Loss Maker, But That's The Point

To be clear, Other Bets are always seriously unprofitable. In Q1 2026, the segment generated $411 million in revenue versus an operating loss of $2.1 billion. For a company that generated $132 billion in revenue by 2025 and nearly $160 billion in revenue over the next 12 months, that loss is easy to find. But it underscores why the market is assigning little or no value to Alphabet's nearly $4.3 billion domestic market share. That's exactly what makes it interesting. Waymo alone has a private valuation of $126 billion, and the option embedded in Wing's commercial scale is free at current prices.

GOOGL Main Image

The stock, which is up nearly 15% year to date, has seen some particularly interesting recent price action. GOOGL is down more than 10% from its recent 52-week high, and briefly broke below key support near $357 on June 11.

The highlight is the close from June 11. After breaking major short-term support, the stock recovered that level and closed back into the range. That's a very close and potentially powerful technical pattern, indicating that the bulls have re-entered the fray and taken back control. If GOOGL can pull back towards short-term resistance near $372, the lower high may not be confirmed.

Shifting gears back to basics, Alphabet Investors' core thesis remains focused on Search, Cloud, and AI. But weeks like this are a reminder that the company is also investing in businesses that could be very important over the next decade.

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