Anthony Levandowski (pictured) the autonomous driving pioneer who downloaded 14,000 Waymo files before moving to Uber Technologies, has been pardoned by outgoing US president Donald Trump.
In August Levandowski was sentenced to 18 months in jail after pleading guilty to the theft.
Levandowski was also ordered to pay Google $756,499 in restitution and was fined $95,000.
In 2009, Levandowski was a founding member of Google’s “Project Chauffeur,” which eventually became Waymo. In January 2016 he left Waymo to found a driverless truck startup called Otto.
A few months later, Uber bought Otto for $680 million and put Levandowski in charge of its self-driving unit.
Waymo’s lawsuit against Uber for Levandowski’s misappropriation of its files was settled in February 2018 with Uber paying $245 million to Waymo. Uber then fired Levandowski.
Levandowski then founded self-driving truck startup, Pronto, but resigned as CEO when he was charged with criminal offences. In March he filed for bankruptcy.
“Today marks the end of three and a half long years and the beginning of another long road ahead,” said Levandowski after being sentenced.
The White House statement announcing the pardon said that the judge called him a “brilliant, groundbreaking engineer that our country needs.”
The White House statement added: “Mr. Levandowski has paid a significant price for his actions and plans to devote his talents to advance the public good.”
Source: electronicsweekly
