Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTJeff Santoro, The Motley FoolFri, July 3, 2026 at 12:30 PM GMT+2 3 min readAutonomous driving has been a hot topic for stock market investors for several years. As more cities approve driverless vehicles, what was once science fiction is rapidly becoming reality. Naturally, investors want in on what could be an important industry.An obvious choice for investment dollars is Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), which has been making progress toward full self-driving for years. However, there's another well-known company that could be the better bet for making autonomous driving a mass-adopted reality.Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »Image source: Getty Images.Waymo is way aheadWhile it may not be the first company investors think about when it comes to autonomous driving, Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL)(NASDAQ: GOOG) is actually the leader in this space. According to Alphabet's Q1 2026 earnings call, Waymo surpassed 500,000 fully autonomous, driverless rides per week, a number that has doubled in less than a year. Waymo is also operating in 11 major cities, with six new cities added in 2026 alone.Compare this with Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD), which is still not operating without human drivers in the vehicles. According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, driverless autonomy is expected to roll out in the fourth quarter of this year.Autonomy with a side of AIWhile Tesla offers more to investors than autonomous driving, Alphabet is a leader in what is perhaps the most transformative technology of our lifetimes, artificial intelligence (AI). With its frontier large language model (LLM), Gemini, Alphabet also offers investors exposure to the leading edge of the AI revolution.AI is progressing too rapidly to predict a winner, but Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, and OpenAI's ChatGPT will be jockeying for position for the foreseeable future as each company releases more advanced models.But that's not allIt would take too long to list all the other aspects of