Anthony Levandowski
French-American automobile engineer (born 1980)

Anthony Levandowski (born March 15, 1980) is a French-American, self-proclaimed self-driving car engineer. In 2009, Levandowski co-founded Google's self-driving car program, known as Waymo, and was a technical lead until 2016. In 2010, he co-founded Google X along with Yoky Matsuoka and Sebastian Thrun. In 2016, he co-founded and sold Otto, an autonomous trucking company, to Uber Technologies. 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. 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 2019, Levandowski was indicted on 33 federal charges of theft of self-driving car trade secrets. In August 2020, Levandowski pleaded guilty to one of the 33 charges, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was pardoned less than six months later on January 20, 2021, the last day of Donald Trump's first presidential term. In September, 2021 Levandowski rejoined Pronto as CEO; subsequently announcing the company's new offroad autonomous division.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Anthony Levandowski” as french-American automobile engineer (born 1980). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q26924676. VIAF identifies the subject as 5506150869806222190004. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1980, 2009, 2016 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anthony Levandowski” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.