31 Facts About Anthony Levandowski

In 2009, Levandowski co-founded Google's self-driving car program, now known as Waymo, and was a technical lead until 2016.

At the 2019 AV Summit hosted by The Information, Anthony Levandowski remarked that a fundamental breakthrough in artificial intelligence is needed to move autonomous vehicle technology forward.

In 2019, Anthony Levandowski was indicted on 33 federal charges of alleged theft of self-driving car trade secrets.

Anthony Levandowski was pardoned less than six months later on January 20,2021, the last day of Donald Trump's presidency.

In September, 2021 Anthony Levandowski rejoined Pronto as CEO; subsequently announcing the company's new offroad autonomous division.

Anthony Levandowski was born on March 15,1980, in Brussels, Belgium to a French diplomat mother and an American businessman.

In 1998, Anthony Levandowski entered the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.

In 2003, Anthony Levandowski launched Construction Control Systems with Randy Miller to build WorkTop, a portable blueprint reader and updater for construction sites.

In 2007, Anthony Levandowski donated the Ghost Rider to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, where it now resides.

In 2006, Anthony Levandowski began working with Sebastian Thrun, whom he had met at the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, on VueTool.

The Ghost Rider was in the Smithsonian at the time, so Anthony Levandowski offered to retrofit a Toyota Prius for the show.

Anthony Levandowski approached Google and 510 Systems with the venture, but they both turned him down for liability reasons.

Anthony Levandowski's Robots was acquired by Google in 2011 alongside his company 510 Systems for an estimated $20 million.

In 2011, Anthony Levandowski lobbied Nevada to allow the testing of autonomous vehicles.

Anthony Levandowski continued to work as a technical lead on Google's self-driving car project alongside Chris Urmson, Dmitri Dolgov, and Mike Montemerlo until January 2016, when he left to launch Otto.

Anthony Levandowski allegedly downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo's confidential files before resigning to found Otto.

In 2015, Anthony Levandowski established a religious organisation called Way of the Future with the stated intention of creating a god with "Christian morals" through artificial intelligence.

In 2018, Anthony Levandowski launched Pronto AI to produce a camera-based, self-driving highway-only retrofit system for semi-trucks.

In February 2022, Anthony Levandowski launched Pollen Mobile, an open-source wireless network.

In October 2022, Anthony Levandowski expressed doubt that self-driving cars would find mainstream success in the near future.

On March 4,2020, Anthony Levandowski filed for bankruptcy protection after the court confirmed an arbitration panel's ruling that Anthony Levandowski and his colleague Lior Ron had breached their employment contracts with Google by poaching employees for their startup.

On March 30,2020, Anthony Levandowski filed a motion with a California bankruptcy judge to force Uber to honor its contractual obligation to indemnify Anthony Levandowski.

However, in April 2018, days before the final arbitration hearing that resulted in Anthony 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.

In March 2017, United States District Judge William Alsup referred the civil case to federal prosecutors, citing the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 after Anthony Levandowski exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

In May 2017, Judge Alsup ordered Anthony Levandowski to refrain from working on Lidar at Uber and required Uber to disclose its discussions on the technology.

Anthony Levandowski was later fired by Uber for failing to cooperate in an internal investigation.

In months before he left Google, the charges alleged Anthony 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 Anthony Levandowski transferred files onto his laptop before leaving the company.

On March 19,2020, Anthony Levandowski agreed to plead guilty to one of the thirty-three charges initially brought against him by the Department of Justice.

Anthony Levandowski admitted to accessing the document about one month after leaving Google in February 2016.

Anthony Levandowski was portrayed by Jeremy Howard in episodes 5 and 6.