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Anthony Levandowski on lessons learned at TC Sessions: Robotics+AI

Anthony Levandowski, the former star Google engineer and serial entrepreneur who was at the center of a trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, is back with a new startup. TechCrunch sits down with Levandowski for a wide-ranging discussion on autonomous vehicles and his new startup Pronto.ai

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Anthony Levandowski, the former star Google engineer and serial entrepreneur who was at the center of a trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, is back with a new startup. TechCrunch sits down with Levandowski for a wide-ranging discussion on autonomous vehicles and his new startup Pronto.ai

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29 Comments

29 Comments

  1. Sir Lancelot

    April 23, 2019 at 3:07 am

    Yup, Elon was right all along.

    • NuclearNow_SolarLater

      April 23, 2019 at 5:38 am

      how long will it take for everyone else to figure it out? lol

    • John T

      April 23, 2019 at 9:16 am

      +NuclearNow_SolarLater After they buy one

    • Leon Guo

      May 5, 2019 at 3:34 pm

      Other people just don’t think computer is powerful enough to process so many high res camera, and elon make the computer, others fall behind

    • ObsidianGT

      May 5, 2019 at 8:31 pm

      +Leon Guo People also didn’t think a computer would be able to best a human world champion at chess. Now who’s the champ?

      People have always lacked vision. A person is needed for that. Then, if that person is persuasive enough, with the achievements to show, then the people will come around.

    • John T

      May 6, 2019 at 5:06 pm

      +Leon Guo Once the real-world data from full self-driving goes public and people see it being 100x safer than human driving, it’s all over for the rest of the industry.

  2. Kirk Augustin

    April 23, 2019 at 4:04 am

    While of course lidar is not reliable enough because it can’t detect metal, shapes, texture, or luminosity. But clearly Elon Musk has it wrong as well, using video, because his Teslas have hit many trucks already, using video.

    • PresidentialWinner

      April 23, 2019 at 10:56 pm

      +Triscuit Square But haven’t you seen horse accidents? Terrible events, so much blood and gore..How about we just start walking.

    • drayzen

      April 24, 2019 at 2:41 am

      Clearly you have no idea what you’re talking about. Watch this to the end then come back and read your comment.
      youtube.com/watch?v=Ucp0TTmvqOE&t=4150s

    • Wirmish

      April 25, 2019 at 4:38 pm

      The ACTUAL Autopilot 1, 2, or 2.5, is not a self driving system.

    • Erik Garcia

      April 29, 2019 at 8:54 pm

      Thats not true. Autopilot hits stuff because it is not full self driving, and drivers arent paying attention.

      FSD isnt flawed because of that, its different software. The features that make FSD possible are not implemented in current versions of tesla autopilot. Once tesla pushes out a feature complete version, the neural network can be trained on all the things that currently autopilot struggles with, but that isnt really possible when your feature set isnt compete.

      Neural nets, and computer learning are the way to go. The limitation you are describing is a software, not hardware issue. Tesla is correct, and easily the leader.

    • Carl Knott

      April 30, 2019 at 4:37 pm

      FSD and autopilot are two totally different technology. Mobilieye’s image chip was used in the original autopilot which uses human annotate features. Tesla’s full self driving technology just demostrated uses vision + deep learning to train the neural net with vast amount of data mostly automatically. No one else is doing that at this moment.

  3. chazzatheninja

    April 23, 2019 at 4:17 am

    Cock and Ball Torture

  4. Btt

    April 23, 2019 at 5:07 am

    This guy is a thief

    • Joel Sullivan

      April 23, 2019 at 7:42 am

      From Wikipedia:
      “On May 15, 2017, United States District Judge banned Levandowski from further work on Otto’s Lidar technology on the basis of having breached the confidentiality of former employer Waymo.”

      So I’m not saying he’s wrong, but perhaps there are other reasons he’s not continuing to develop lidar.

    • Ryan Fulcher

      April 23, 2019 at 9:02 am

      +Joel Sullivan or… ockham’s razor

    • Rodney Johnson

      April 24, 2019 at 4:46 am

      No wonder he started a church.

    • RyNiuu

      May 7, 2019 at 9:26 pm

      these guys are TSLAQ ^

  5. Tanmay Srivastava

    April 23, 2019 at 6:36 am

    Who was sent here by elon

  6. etbadaboum

    April 23, 2019 at 1:10 pm

    So basically Levandowski stole lidar tech from Google to Otto for nothing

    • Actual Factual

      April 24, 2019 at 12:29 am

      (((Levandowski))) jews always stealing tech from everyone and selling it to china, russia, and india to make Israel look good in front of them and making a pretty shekkle from it.

    • RobosergTV

      April 29, 2019 at 11:42 am

      +Actual Factual idiot

  7. Mother Frunker

    April 23, 2019 at 8:02 pm

    “I think if somebody started today and they were really good, they might have something like what we have today in 3 years, but in 2 years, ours will be 3 times better.” – Elon Musk

  8. drayzen

    April 24, 2019 at 2:37 am

    Build out AI in a non-fearful way = Skynet.

  9. Wirmish

    April 25, 2019 at 4:36 pm

    1:55 – Elon Musk is right. I’m surprised… no.

  10. AdamW_Parker

    April 26, 2019 at 9:31 pm

    “Lidar is lame”

  11. Carl Knott

    April 30, 2019 at 4:30 pm

    The amazing thing is not just Elon was right but he saw exactly what it is even before he started to execute. Other very smart people still need to fool around with it for a long time before learning the truth.

  12. venomTang

    May 6, 2019 at 3:43 pm

    I think this man is already being controlled by Ai

  13. Charles Neely

    May 7, 2019 at 6:17 pm

    so after this guy is legally banned from working w/ lidar he has the revelation that its not necessary….

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Build Mode: Inside the Fundraise

Startup fundraising is harder than ever, and Season 3 of Build Mode is here to help. Whether you’re raising a seed round, preparing for Series A, pitching venture capital firms, negotiating a term sheet, or exploring alternatives to VC funding, this season is packed with practical advice from founders and investors who have successfully navigated…

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Startup fundraising is harder than ever, and Season 3 of Build Mode is here to help. Whether you’re raising a seed round, preparing for Series A, pitching venture capital firms, negotiating a term sheet, or exploring alternatives to VC funding, this season is packed with practical advice from founders and investors who have successfully navigated the fundraising journey.

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Science & Technology

Inside the Fundraise l Build Mode

Startup fundraising is harder than ever, and Season 3 of Build Mode is here to help. Whether you’re raising a seed round, preparing for Series A, pitching venture capital firms, negotiating a term sheet, or exploring alternatives to VC funding, this season is packed with practical advice from founders and investors who have successfully navigated…

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Startup fundraising is harder than ever, and Season 3 of Build Mode is here to help. Whether you’re raising a seed round, preparing for Series A, pitching venture capital firms, negotiating a term sheet, or exploring alternatives to VC funding, this season is packed with practical advice from founders and investors who have successfully navigated the fundraising journey.
Hosted by TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Editor Isabelle Johannessen, Build Mode is the TechCrunch podcast where founders, investors, and startup operators share honest conversations about what it really takes to build and finance a company. This season features Charles Hudson (Precursor Ventures), Andrew Dai (Elorian), Ashley Tyrner-Dolce (FarmboxRx), Kristina Subbotina (Lexsy AI), Sydney Sykes (NVIDIA), Xavier Chi (Mbodi), Jack Groetzinger (SeatGeek), Sasha Orloff (Puzzle), Everette Taylor (Kickstarter), Manan Mehta (Unshackled Ventures), Julia Hartz (Eventbrite), and more. Together, they cover topics including avoiding down rounds, raising capital in today’s venture market, working with corporate venture capital, crowdfunding, startup financial readiness, fundraising as an immigrant founder, IPO lessons, and how to deliver a winning startup pitch.
If you’re an entrepreneur, startup founder, investor, or operator looking for actionable fundraising advice, this season is your playbook. New episodes begin July 9 and release every week on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen to podcasts. Subscribe now and learn how to raise capital, grow your startup, and build with confidence.

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The autonomous vehicle space is starting to feel like a repeat of the 2016 hype cycle. Travis Kalanick is back building a robotics company, and the talent wars and capital are heating up the same way they did the first time around. The money’s flowing back, and it’s the people who lived through that first wave who are building the next one. 

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Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

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00:31 Eyal’s AV background and “2016 all over again”
02:02 Why hype cycles hit every new industry
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