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Exec Accused of Stealing Waymo's Trade Secrets Starts New Self-Driving Company (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the comeback-story dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer and serial entrepreneur who was at the center of a trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, is back. And he is connected to an autonomous trucking company that is still in stealth mode, TechCrunch has learned. The company, called Kache.ai (pronounced like cache), has kept a low profile since paperwork registering it as a corporation was first filed with the California Secretary of State nearly seven months ago. And at first glance, there's no indication that Levandowski is even tied to the company.

Little is known about Kache.ai. The word "Kache" in Chinese means truck, which could signal a connection to China. Although TechCrunch was not able to independently verify if Kache.ai has any outside partners or backers yet. [T]he Kache.ai website said the company was working on "the next generation of autonomous vehicle technology for the commercial trucking industry." It appears the company is hiring at every level, from mapping and database experts to people with robotics and simulation skills. The website also noted that the company is looking for software engineers with experience in convolutional neural networks as well as computer vision and machine learning algorithms.

11 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. That's kinda like... by cre1mer · · Score: 1

    Me starting an Amazon affiliate company after spamming Slashdot to death for a year. Oh, wait.

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    Goodbye, Slashdot!
  2. Common Technology in Autonomous Vehicles? by mykepredko · · Score: 1

    I'm wondering how much common technology there is in the current state of the art of autonomous vehicles for stealing from your previous employer would make a difference.

    As I understand it, every company is approaching the problem from a different perspective and (I would think a bigger issue) is that each company has a different sensor set and philosophy which means that there is different information provided for the system to plan it's way forwards (excuse the pun).

    I guess there are common high level operations/actions/responses (like "there's a bike in my path, do I turn, slow down, change lane, etc.?) but I would think that these are changing, being dependent on laws and regulations, hardware and vehicle parameters.

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    Mimetics Inc. Twitter
    1. Re:Common Technology in Autonomous Vehicles? by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 1

      I could say the same about CRM or ERP. Each vendor has a different philosophy, technology, database, etc. Still, top-level execs and engineers at such firms are pretty much interchangeable.

    2. Re:Common Technology in Autonomous Vehicles? by stephanruby · · Score: 3, Informative

      As I understand it, every company is approaching the problem from a different perspective and (I would think a bigger issue) is that each company has a different sensor set and philosophy which means that there is different information provided for the system to plan it's way forwards (excuse the pun).

      In the case of Uber vs. Waymo, the blueprints of one sensor were completely identical. And a vendor "inadvertently" emailed Waymo an email that was meant for Uber. That's what tipped off Waymo according to them that they were using an identical part that Waymo had designed itself.

      You also have to keep in mind that it only took three months for the original exec to leave Waymo, create his own company called Otto, and sell it to Uber for 680 US million dollars. 680 million dollars for three months work, that's unusually good, don't you think?

      You also have to keep in mind that the trial wasn't going well for Uber and that the only reason Waymo settled the case so easily was because Google/Alphabet had already invested billions of dollars into Uber, so destroying Uber wasn't in Google's self-interest. Google really wanted for Travis to step down as CEO and that's the key thing that happened that made Google bury the hatchet.

      Without Google owning a significant portion of Uber, Google/Waymo would have pursued the matter to the end and Levandowski would be in prison by now.

    3. Re:Common Technology in Autonomous Vehicles? by mykepredko · · Score: 1

      Thanx - that's helpful to explain the situation.

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      Mimetics Inc. Twitter
    4. Re: Common Technology in Autonomous Vehicles? by houghi · · Score: 1

      I shpuld start looking at all patents about radar, lidar, cameras and add "in a vehicle" to it. Or save time and replace "on the inyernet" wit "in a vehicle".

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      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  3. Pronounced... by Vylen · · Score: 1

    Kache.. pronounced like cache... but how do you pronounce cache :P

    1. Re: Pronounced... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That's not jews, that's Republicans. It does include some jews, which is why when Trump gives speeches to groups of them and says dumb shit and people cringe, it's kind of an portent of what's to come really.

      *(Because he's a nazi, make no bonepiles about it)

  4. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  5. Re:Maaayyyybe by tehcyder · · Score: 1

    Like "Le Fucking Thing." - sounds classy, right?

    Non!

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    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  6. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion