Anthony Levandowski (born March 15, 1980) is a French-American engineer and entrepreneur known for his pioneering work in autonomous vehicle technology. He co-founded Google's self-driving car project, which later became Waymo, and served as a technical lead until 2016. He also founded Otto, an autonomous trucking company acquired by Uber, and Pronto, which completed the first cross-country autonomous drive. Levandowski's career has been marked by both innovation and legal controversy, including a federal indictment for trade secret theft and a subsequent pardon.
Born in Brussels, Belgium, to a French diplomat mother and an American businessman, Levandowski moved to California in the mid-1990s. He developed websites for local businesses as a teenager and later attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in industrial engineering and operations research. His early projects included building robots and founding several technology companies, setting the stage for his later work in self-driving systems.
Early life and education
Levandowski was born on March 15, 1980, in Brussels, Belgium. His mother was a French diplomat, and his father was an American businessman. He relocated to California in the mid-1990s, where he began developing websites for local businesses during his teenage years. In 1998, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, earning both bachelor's and master's degrees in industrial engineering and operations research.
As a freshman, Levandowski founded La Raison, an intranet and IT services company that generated $50,000 in its first year. During his sophomore year, he built the BillSortBot, a robot made from 300 Lego pieces that sorted Monopoly money for the Sun Microsoft robotics competition, winning first place. In 2003, he co-founded Construction Control Systems with Randy Miller to develop WorkTop, a portable blueprint reader and updater for construction sites.
In 2003, Levandowski and fellow Berkeley engineers formed the "Blue Team" to build an autonomous motorcycle named Ghostrider for the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge. The motorcycle, built over several years at an estimated cost of $100,000, was the only two-wheeled vehicle in the competitions. It was equipped with video cameras, computers, a GPS receiver, an IMU, and motors to control the clutch and steering. At the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge, the motorcycle collapsed at the starting line due to a forgotten switch preventing stabilization. Despite this setback, Levandowski's leadership in the challenge paved the way for building PriBot, the first self-driving car to drive on public roads. In 2007, he donated Ghostrider to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, where it remains.
Early career and Google Street View
In 2006, Levandowski began collaborating with Sebastian Thrun, whom he met at the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, on VueTool, a Stanford street mapping project using vehicle-mounted cameras. In early 2007, Google X hired Thrun, Levandowski, and their team to develop Google Street View. To meet Larry Page's target of capturing 1,000,000 kilometers (620,000 miles) of roadways by the end of 2007, Levandowski ordered 100 Toyota Priuses from a local dealership.
The Street View team's success relied on the "Topcon box" (IP-S2 Mobile Mapping System), a roof-mounted unit with Lidar, cameras, GPS, IMUs, and wheel encoders that enabled 3D mapping. The Topcon box was designed by 510 Systems, a startup co-founded by Levandowski in early 2007 with Pierre-Yves Droz and Andrew Schultz. Google used 510 Systems technology until quietly acquiring the company in 2011.
In 2008, Levandowski was approached by the Discovery Channel's Prototype This! to use Ghostrider in an episode delivering pizza with an unmanned vehicle. Since Ghostrider was in the Smithsonian, he offered to retrofit a Toyota Prius instead. Google and 510 Systems declined to sponsor the project for liability reasons. Levandowski later told The Guardian: "Google was very supportive of the idea, but it absolutely did not want its name associated with it. Google was worried about a Google engineer building a car that crashes and kills someone." With Google's blessing, he founded Anthony's Robots in June 2008 to build PriBot, a self-driving Toyota Prius with one of the first spinning Lidar units, the first to drive on public roads. For the show, police cleared a route from San Francisco across the Bay Bridge; the drive succeeded despite scraping a guard rail. Within weeks, Levandowski demonstrated that self-driving cars were feasible on a budget. By early 2009, Levandowski and Thrun received approval from Larry Page and Sergey Brin to launch a driverless car project within Google. Anthony's Robots and 510 Systems were acquired by Google in 2011 for an estimated $20 million.
Waymo and Otto
In 2009, Levandowski and Thrun co-founded Google's self-driving car project, Chauffeur, now known as Waymo. Over the next two years, 510 Systems built five additional self-driving Priuses for Google. In 2011, Levandowski lobbied Nevada to allow testing of autonomous vehicles. In May 2012, the Las Vegas DMV conducted the first self-driving car test, with Chris Urmson in the driver's seat and Levandowski in the passenger seat; the car passed. Levandowski worked as a technical lead alongside Urmson, Dmitri Dolgov, and Mike Montemerlo until January 2016, when he left to launch Otto. His other Google contributions included Street View, Cardboard, Telepresence, Ground Truth, Oblique Aerial Imagery, and Tiramisu.
Otto was founded in January 2016 by Levandowski, Lior Ron, Claire Delaunay, and Don Burnette, with eleven former Google employees. Otto retrofitted big rig trucks with self-driving kits. Levandowski said he left Google because he "was eager to commercialize a self-driving vehicle as quickly as possible." Otto was acquired by Uber in late July 2016, and Levandowski assumed leadership of Uber's driverless car operation. In May 2017, he was fired from Uber after Waymo filed a lawsuit alleging trade secret theft.
Pronto and cross-country drive
In 2018, Levandowski co-founded Pronto, an autonomous trucking company. In October 2018, Pronto became the first self-driving technology company to complete a cross-country drive in an autonomous vehicle. 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. In September 2021, he rejoined Pronto as CEO and announced the company's new offroad autonomous division.
Legal issues and pardon
In 2019, Levandowski was indicted on 33 federal charges of theft of self-driving car trade secrets, related to allegedly downloading 9.7 GB of Waymo's confidential files before resigning. In August 2020, he pleaded guilty to one charge and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was pardoned on January 20, 2021, the last day of Donald Trump's first presidential term, less than six months after his sentencing.
Legacy and impact
Levandowski's work has significantly influenced the development of autonomous vehicles, from early DARPA challenges to commercial self-driving systems. His contributions to Google Street View and Waymo laid foundational technology for mapping and navigation. Despite legal controversies, his entrepreneurial efforts with Otto and Pronto advanced autonomous trucking. His career highlights the intersection of innovation, corporate competition, and legal boundaries in emerging technologies.