Anthony Levandowski net worth amounts to $50 million. Are you wondering how the tech prodigy Levandowski’s net worth went down from approximately $50-100 million to that bizarre amount?
This article thoroughly explores the life of Anthony and the evolutionary journey of how he became a pioneer in the self-driving car industry from being an engineer at Google and how everything went south after he was sued for selling trade secrets.
Anthony Levandowski. The self-driving car tech pioneer is currently worth -$50 million. However, he used to be a successful French-American businessman worth between $50 million to $100 million before he was sued for stealing trade secrets.
He pleaded guilty and eventually lost the judgment of $179 million in 2020. He then filed for bankruptcy. It was found through the bankruptcy filing his assets amounted to $50 to $100 million, and his liabilities were between $100 and $500 million.
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Name |
Anthony Levandowski |
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Date of Birth |
March 15, 1980 |
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Place of Birth |
Brussels, Belgium |
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Alma Mater |
University of California, Berkeley |
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Famous For |
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Distinguished Achievements |
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Personal Website |
Anthony Levandowski earned his Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. His exact major was Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.
While at Google, Levandowski, the groundbreaking engineer, worked on several projects, including the most famous Google’s self-driving car project (Waymo).
Some of his notable projects include Street View, Cardboard, Telepresence, Ground Truth, Oblique Aerial Imagery, and Tiramisu.
Google’s self-driving car project Chauffeur was started by Anthony Levandowski and Sebastian Thrun in 2009.
Levandowski worked with Chris Urmson, Dmitri Dolgov, and Mike Montemerlo till January 2016 on this project while making several other Priuses for Google and even doing car tests in Nevada.
At one of the tests in Las Vegas, Levandowski was sitting in the passenger seat with Chris Urmson in the driving seat.
In January 2016, Levandowski left Google to launch Otto. He co-founded the company with Lior Ron, Claire Delaunay, and Don Burnette.
Otto helped big trucks integrate the self-driving feature and retrofitted them with the appropriate kits. In July 2016, the trucking business Otto was acquired by Uber Technologies Inc., and he was made the leader of Uber’s driverless car project.
However, he was fired from Uber in May 2017 as Google and Waymo charged that he had been involved in stealing self-driving car trade secrets from Google’s server.
It is alleged in the lawsuit that Anthony downloaded data (9.7 GB) before he left Google and founded Otto. Following the lawsuit, Uber completely shut down its self-driving car project in July 2018.
In January 2016, Levandowski left Google to launch Otto. He co-founded the company with Lior Ron, Claire Delaunay, and Don Burnette.
Otto helped big trucks integrate the self-driving feature and retrofitted them with the appropriate kits. In July 2016, the trucking business Otto was acquired by Uber Technologies Inc., and he was made the leader of Uber’s driverless car project.
However, he was fired from Uber in May 2017 as Google and Waymo charged that he had been involved in stealing self-driving car trade secrets from Google’s server.
It is alleged in the lawsuit that Anthony downloaded data (9.7 GB) before he left Google and founded Otto. Following the lawsuit, Uber completely shut down its self-driving car project in July 2018.
In 2022, he founded another open-source wireless network company called Pollen based on the Solana network that would create a decentralized mobile network and distribute antennas and other devices called Flowers, Hummingbirds and Bumblebees to their consumers.
Anthony Levandowski wanted to start a religious organization where he wanted to create a God with the help of artificial intelligence, but the God would have “Christian morals.” Hence, he founded a religious organization called Way of the Future, but he finally dissolved in 2021.
Waymo alleged in its lawsuit in February 2017 that Levandowski downloaded confidential files and trade secrets from Google’s server. The size of the data allegedly stolen was was also significant and amounted to 9.7 GB.
According to the civil suit between Uber and Waymo, it was alleged that Levandowski stole data, including blueprints, design and testing docs. He stole them right before he quit Google and founded Otto.
Initially, Larry Page didn’t want to sue him, but when he saw the blueprints of the Lidar design via mail, where Uber’s Lidar design docs were attached.
Google learned about it accidentally when one of Waymo’s suppliers copied a Waymo engineer in a mail with Uber’s Lidar design. Then, Page realized that Uber’s design was an exact replica of Google’s Lidar. Hence, he finally changed his mind and filed the lawsuit.
The civil lawsuit was finally settled between Google and Uber, with Uber paying them 0.34% of its equity with an approximate value of $245 million. They also agreed not to use the unit’s tech.
Before this lawsuit in 2017, Anthony was taken to private arbitration related to a contract dispute by Google. After the court ruled that Levandowski and Lior Ron had breached their contract by poaching employees for their startup, Levandowski filed for bankruptcy protection.
It was identified by the arbitration panel that Levandowski owed Google a total of $179 million. It included the ten million dollars ($120 million) he received as a salary while he was at the company and the remaining $59 million with respect to the interest and legal fees accrued.
As Levandowski and Ron entered an indemnification agreement with Uber to protect them against Google’s immeasurable resources, Levandowski filed a motion with a California bankruptcy judge to honor its contractual obligation.
Uber did honor the agreement initially, but days before the final arbitration hearing, Uber said they recover their legal costs by demanding a reimbursement as he breached the agreement by not agreeing to testify.
After Levandowski exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as the civil case was finally referred to federal prosecutors by Judge Alsup, citing Economic Espionage Act. Levandowski was ordered not to work on Lidar at Uber and also ordered Uber to disclose its tech. Uber fired him and publicly apologized for hiring him.
Uber and Google finally agreed to a global settlement agreement in 2022 concerning the lawsuit filed by Google against Uber because of Anthony Levandowski.
It was mentioned in the court records that Uber had agreed to pay the majority of the settlement by honoring the indemnity clause, and Levandowski needed to pay somewhere between $25 to $30 million.
However, the US Department of Justice and California’s IRS objected to the settlement due to Levandowski’s estate’s tax implications.
Levandowski was charged with theft of trade secrets from Google’s self-driving unit Waymo. Google alleged that Anthony downloaded thousands of files and documents related to Chauffeur, which was the project that led to Waymo.
It was mentioned in the lawsuit that the downloaded files included design files, technical specifications, and important engineering information about the hardware used on Project Chauffeur’s self-driving vehicles.
The Department of Justice finally charged him in August 2019, and after his indictment, he announced that Pronto’s Chief Safety Officer, Robbie Miller, would take over as the CEO of Pronto.
Eventually, in March 2020, Levandowski pleaded guilty to only one of the thirty-three charges of downloading an internal project tracking document called Chauffeur TL Weekly – Q4 2015 from an unsecured Google Drive.
It contained a spreadsheet detailing team goals, project metrics and weekly status updates accessible by Levandowski’s team, which he agreed that he accessed a month after leaving Google.
The formal procedure of pleading guilty to one count of trade secret theft was done in August 2020. After this, Levandowski was sentenced to an 18-month prison term by Judge Alsup, where he commented on the massive scale of the theft of trade secrets but also mentioned the need for brilliant engineers like Levandowski to have a revolutionary vision like he envisioned self-driving car technology.
In addition to the prison term, the judge ordered Levandowski to pay $756,499.22 as restitution to Waymo and a fine of $95,000.
However, he didn’t complete his entire prison term and was pardoned by Donald Trump on January 2021.
Anthony Levandowski is very tight-lipped about his wife and children. Nobody knows who they are in the media.
Uber acquired Otto, the self-driving truck company in July 2016 after Anthony Levandowski started it in January 2016. The project, however, was shut off in July 2018 after firing Anthony in May 2017 following his dispute with Google.
Anthony Levandowski is the founder and CEO of Pollenmobile.io.
German computer scientist Ernst Dickmanns is considered the father of autonomous driving, who converted a Mercedes Van into an autonomous vehicle with the help of an integrated computer.
Pollen Mobile is headquartered in San Francisco, California, in the United States.
As per his LinkedIn Profile, Anthony Levandowski has worked as a software engineer at Google, as the co-founder of Otto, as VP of Engineering at Uber, co-founder and CEO of Pronto Ai and Founder and CEO of Pollen Mobile.
Anthony Levandowski’s net worth could have been billions of dollars by now for making a fundamental breakthrough in the autonomous vehicle industry. Be it his autonomous cars or the autonomous trucks; they are significant inventions in modern times.
However, one thing that he lacked was ethics. Google has supported him throughout his entire journey and paid him millions. But, he broke their trust by being unprofessional and committing heinous crimes such as stealing trade secrets.
Hopefully, he has learned his lesson from the legal battle that he endured and gained the necessary knowledge about being more ethical and trustworthy. Pronto and Pollen will hopefully be the next big things in the tech industry.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. The author’s opinions are their own and should not be taken as a recommendation to invest in any particular product or service. It is strongly advised that you consult a financial advisor before making investment decisions. Investing always carries risk, and it is up to each individual to consider their options and make informed choices carefully.
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