Anthony Levandowski
Anthony Levandowski (born March 15, 1980) is a French-American self-driving car engineer.[1] In 2009, Levandowski co-founded Google's self-driving car program, now known as Waymo, and was a technical lead until 2016.[2][3] In 2016, he co-founded and sold Otto, an autonomous trucking company, to Uber Technologies.[4][5] In 2018, he co-founded the autonomous trucking company Pronto; the first self-driving technology company to complete a cross-country drive in an autonomous vehicle in October 2018.[6][7] At the 2019 AV Summit hosted by The Information, Levandowski remarked that a fundamental breakthrough in artificial intelligence is needed to move autonomous vehicle technology forward.[8]
Anthony Levandowski
March 15, 1980
- French
- American
Bachelor's degree in Industrial engineering and operations research
Engineer
2009 - present
In 2019, Levandowski was indicted on 33 federal charges of alleged theft of self-driving car trade secrets.[9] In August 2020, Levandowski pled guilty to one of the 33 charges, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.[10][11][12][13] He was pardoned less than six months later on January 20, 2021, the last day of Donald Trump's presidency.[14] In September, 2021 Levandowski rejoined Pronto as CEO; subsequently announcing the company's new offroad autonomous division.[15]
Early life and education[edit]
Levandowski was born on March 15, 1980, in Brussels, Belgium to a French diplomat mother and an American businessman. He moved to California in the mid-1990s. During his teenage years, he developed websites for local businesses.[3]
In 1998, Levandowski entered the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.[16] As a freshman, he founded La Raison, an intranet and IT services company that made fifty thousand dollars in its first year.[17][3] His sophomore year, Levandowski built the BillSortBot, a robot made from 300 Lego pieces that sorted Monopoly money for the Sun Microsoft robotics competition. He won first place.[17] In 2003, Levandowski launched Construction Control Systems with Randy Miller to build WorkTop, a portable blueprint reader and updater for construction sites.[17]
In 2003, Levandowski and fellow Berkeley engineers, aka the "Blue Team", started building an autonomous motorcycle, nicknamed Ghost Rider, for the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge.[18] The Ghost Rider motorcycle was originally a Honda RX. It was built over several years for an estimated $100,000 and competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004 and 2005. It was the only autonomous two-wheeled vehicle in the competitions.[19] The motorcycle was retrofitted with video cameras, computers, a GPS receiver, an IMU, and motors to power the clutch and steering.[20] As the team lead, participation in the DARPA Grand Challenge paved the way for Levandowski to build PriBot, the first self-driving car to drive on public roads.[21] In 2007, Levandowski donated the Ghost Rider to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, where it now resides.[21][3]
Civil lawsuit[edit]
According to a February 2017 civil lawsuit filed by Waymo officially known as Waymo v. Uber (Levandowski was not a defendant in the case),[44] Levandowski allegedly "downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo's confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files, and testing documentation"[45][46] before resigning to found Otto.[47][48] Google co-founder Larry Page was reluctant to file the suit. However, he was pushed over the edge when one of Waymo's suppliers inadvertently copied a Waymo engineer on an email of a schematic of Uber's Lidar design. Uber's design appeared to be almost identical to that of Waymo.[49]: 234 The civil suit between Uber and Waymo was settled in February 2018 with Uber agreeing to pay Waymo 0.34% of its equity, valued at approximately $245 million, and not to use the unit's technology.[44][50]
Before filing its lawsuit against Uber in 2017, Google had separately taken Levandowski to private arbitration over a contract dispute.[51] On March 4, 2020, Levandowski filed for bankruptcy protection after the court confirmed an arbitration panel's ruling that Levandowski and his colleague Lior Ron had breached their employment contracts with Google by poaching employees for their startup. The panel found that Levandowski owed Google $179 million—$120 million accounted for the salary he received while at the company, and the remainder for interest and legal fees accrued.[52]
On March 30, 2020, Levandowski filed a motion with a California bankruptcy judge to force Uber to honor its contractual obligation to indemnify Levandowski. At issue is the validity of the indemnification agreement that Uber, Levandowski, and Ron entered into pre-acquisition. According to a court document, "The indemnification agreement was structured to ensure that Mr. Levandowski would not be left unprotected against Google, which had inexhaustible resources to attack Mr. Levandowski."[53] Uber initially honored the agreement and covered both Levandowski and Ron's legal costs. However, in April 2018, days before the final arbitration hearing that resulted in Levandowski owing Google $179 million, Uber informed him it would be seeking reimbursement for his defense costs, arguing he had breached their agreement by refusing to testify.[53]
In March 2017, United States District Judge William Alsup referred the civil case to federal prosecutors, citing the Economic Espionage Act of 1996[54] after Levandowski exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.[4] In May 2017, Judge Alsup ordered Levandowski to refrain from working on Lidar at Uber and required Uber to disclose its discussions on the technology.[55] Levandowski was later fired by Uber for failing to cooperate in an internal investigation.[56] Soon after the case went to trial, Uber, through its lawyers, publicly apologized for hiring Levandowski.[49]: 255
In February, 2022, Levandowski, Uber and Google negotiated a global settlement agreement for the lawsuit Google brought against Levandowski. According to court records, Uber agreed to pay Google a “Substantial Portion” of the settlement, honoring their indemnification clause with Levandowski. Levandowski was required to pay between $25M and $30M.[57][58]
In April 2022, the settlement agreement faced objections from the U.S. Department of Justice and California’s Internal Revenue Service over the tax implications for Levandowski’s estate.[59]
Criminal conviction and pardon[edit]
On August 27, 2019, Levandowski was charged by the Department of Justice for the alleged theft of trade secrets from Google's self-driving unit Waymo. In months before he left Google, the charges alleged Levandowski downloaded thousands of files from Waymo's predecessor, Project Chauffeur. The data allegedly included "critical engineering information about the hardware used on Project Chauffeur self-driving vehicles," and that Levandowski transferred files onto his laptop before leaving the company. Following the indictment, Pronto, a new self-driving trucking company that Levandowski co-founded, announced that its Chief Safety Officer, Robbie Miller, would take over as CEO.[60]
On March 19, 2020, Levandowski agreed to plead guilty to one of the thirty-three charges initially brought against him by the Department of Justice. Originally charged with stealing documents containing trade secrets, technical specifications, and Lidar design, Levandowski's pleaded guilty to downloading an internal project tracking document called, "Chauffeur TL Weekly – Q4 2015"—a spreadsheet consisting of team goals, project metrics, and weekly status updates accessible by Levandowski's team on an unsecured Google Drive. Levandowski admitted to accessing the document about one month after leaving Google in February 2016.[61][62][63]
On August 4, 2020, Levandowski formally pleaded guilty to one count of trade secret theft, and Judge William Alsup sentenced him to 18 months in prison. Prosecutors agreed to drop the remaining 32 charges as a part of the plea agreement.[64][65][66][67][68] During the sentencing, Alsup said, "this is the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen. This was not small. This was massive in scale."[64] He also described Levandowski as a "brilliant, groundbreaking engineer that our country needs. We need those people with vision. I'm going to give him that."[69] In addition to time served, Levandowski was ordered to pay $756,499.22 in restitution to Waymo and a fine of $95,000.[70]
On January 20, 2021, his last day in office, President Donald Trump granted a full pardon to Levandowski.[71]
Media representations[edit]
In February 2022, Showtime released the series Super Pumped, which portrays the history of Uber from CEO Travis Kalanick’s perspective. Levandowski was portrayed by Jeremy Howard in episodes 5 and 6.[72][73]