Overview
- An unidentified man broke into the Hot 8 Yoga studio in San Francisco and left in a Waymo robotaxi that was waiting outside after placing the stolen items in the vehicle.
- Police served a search warrant in April for ride account data and in- and exterior video, but Waymo had already deleted the cabin footage before the warrant was filed and exterior cameras blur faces for privacy.
- Investigators found the ride account data inconclusive because the booking may have used stolen payment credentials or a burner phone, so metadata did not point to a real identity.
- Six months after the theft, San Francisco authorities have not identified or arrested a suspect and continue the open investigation without the interior video that might have yielded a lead.
- The episode follows other 2025 cases where criminals used Waymos as getaways and highlights a wider tension between rider privacy, opaque retention policies, and law enforcement access to autonomous-vehicle records.