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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

Published

8 years ago

April 22, 2019

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29 Comments

Sir Lancelot

April 23, 2019 at 3:07 am

Yup, Elon was right all along.

Reply
- NuclearNow_SolarLater
  
  April 23, 2019 at 5:38 am
  
  how long will it take for everyone else to figure it out? lol
  
  Reply
- John T
  
  April 23, 2019 at 9:16 am
  
  +NuclearNow_SolarLater After they buy one
  
  Reply
- 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
  
  Reply
- 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.
  
  Reply
- 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.
  
  Reply
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.

Reply
- 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.
  
  Reply
- 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
  
  Reply
- Wirmish
  
  April 25, 2019 at 4:38 pm
  
  The ACTUAL Autopilot 1, 2, or 2.5, is not a self driving system.
  
  Reply
- 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.
  
  Reply
- 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.
  
  Reply
chazzatheninja

April 23, 2019 at 4:17 am

Cock and Ball Torture

Reply
Btt

April 23, 2019 at 5:07 am

This guy is a thief

Reply
- 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.
  
  Reply
- Ryan Fulcher
  
  April 23, 2019 at 9:02 am
  
  +Joel Sullivan or… ockham’s razor
  
  Reply
- Rodney Johnson
  
  April 24, 2019 at 4:46 am
  
  No wonder he started a church.
  
  Reply
- RyNiuu
  
  May 7, 2019 at 9:26 pm
  
  these guys are TSLAQ ^
  
  Reply
Tanmay Srivastava

April 23, 2019 at 6:36 am

Who was sent here by elon

Reply
etbadaboum

April 23, 2019 at 1:10 pm

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

Reply
- 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.
  
  Reply
- RobosergTV
  
  April 29, 2019 at 11:42 am
  
  +Actual Factual idiot
  
  Reply
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

Reply
drayzen

April 24, 2019 at 2:37 am

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

Reply
Wirmish

April 25, 2019 at 4:36 pm

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

Reply
AdamW_Parker

April 26, 2019 at 9:31 pm

“Lidar is lame”

Reply
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.

Reply
venomTang

May 6, 2019 at 3:43 pm

I think this man is already being controlled by Ai

Reply
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….

Reply

Science & Technology

After the midterms, is the AI industry in for a rough two years? | Equity Podcast

Democrats’ historic victories in this week’s U.S. midterm elections could also transform the tech industry. The public voted on 41 data center-related ballot measures on Tuesday — in all but one, the majority voted to impose more restrictions on data center development. And even when data centers weren’t on the ballot directly, they were a…

Published

3 days ago

November 6, 2026

CYBER TECH TV

Democrats’ historic victories in this week’s U.S. midterm elections could also transform the tech industry.

The public voted on 41 data center-related ballot measures on Tuesday — in all but one, the majority voted to impose more restrictions on data center development. And even when data centers weren’t on the ballot directly, they were a major talking point, with newly-elected Democratic governors and congressmembers likely to support additional regulation.

On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and Anthony Ha discuss what the election will mean for the tech industry moving forward — not just when it comes to data centers (which OpenAI is already trying to rebrand), but also increased government scrutiny of Big Tech.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

• Whether Google first satellite data center is ushering our orbital data center future
• If major layoffs at design software company Canva and website builder Squarespace can be blamed on AI
• Marvell’s $115 billion acquisition of Lumentum, in one of the largest deals in history
• Why CrowdStrike just acquired of two AI security startups
What NBCUniversal’s investment in Indian microdrama startup Elo • Elo means for the media landscape

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

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

0:47 Founder Summit recap and an Equity team update

2:23 Midterm results and the data center backlash

7:49 OpenAI rebrands data centers as “compute campuses”

10:57 Wall Street cools on the data center buildout

13:30 Regulatory certainty and building outside the U.S.

15:45 Canva and Squarespace layoffs

20:37 Can AI chatbots replace products like Squarespace?

23:22 Marvell’s $115B Lumentum acquisition

26:51 CrowdStrike buys Fiddler AI and Dreadnode

30:20 Micro drama startup raises $80M

30:59 Outro

Science & Technology

VC’s Gender Gap is Closing (But Not Fast Enough) with Paige Hendrix Buckner

Women and non-binary investors have doubled their share of partner seats at U.S. venture firms in less than a decade. But a title doesn’t always come with power. In this episode of Build Mode () , host Isabelle Johannesen sits down with Paige Hendrix Buckner, CEO of All Raise, a national nonprofit helping women and…

Published

4 days ago

November 5, 2026

CYBER TECH TV

Women and non-binary investors have doubled their share of partner seats at U.S. venture firms in less than a decade. But a title doesn’t always come with power.

In this episode of Build Mode () , host Isabelle Johannesen sits down with Paige Hendrix Buckner, CEO of All Raise, a national nonprofit helping women and non-binary venture capitalists grow their power and influence.

Paige shares how the share of women and non-binary people in partner-plus roles at U.S. VC firms grew from 9% to 18.8%, and why All Raise is now focused on a new measurement. She explains why a partner title doesn’t guarantee check-writing authority, board seats, carry, or credit for deals, and how the attribution gap makes it harder for investors to build the track record they need to raise their own funds.

They get into:

•

What All Raise does and its strategy of community, data, and “lore”

•

The attribution gap and why credit for deals matters

•

Why sponsorship can make or break an investor’s career

•

Why more women are leaving to start their own funds

•

How diverse VC firms change which founders get funded

•

What the $124 trillion wealth transfer could mean for women LPs

•

What good firm building looks like, from LP relationships to brand

•

How AI is helping emerging managers run lean firms

•

The different paths into a venture career

Subscribe to Build Mode on Apple Podcasts () , Spotify () , or wherever you like to listen () . And watch the full videos on YouTube () . New episodes of Build Mode () drop every Thursday.

Hosted by Isabelle Johannesen. Produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience development led by Morgan Little. Special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.

Science & Technology

Open source AI is booming. Hugging Face explains who profits. | Equity Podcast

Open source models are becoming more mainstream as enterprises, governments and startups alike rely on the promise of lower costs, more control, and more flexibility. But as increasingly capable models become more freely available, how do companies capture value? And with Chinese open models gaining ground, can American players keep up? On this episode of…

Published

5 days ago

November 4, 2026

CYBER TECH TV

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Irene Solaiman, Chief Policy Officer and SVP of Strategy at Hugging Face, about what startups need to know before building on open models, from choosing the right tools and infrastructure to navigating the trade-offs shaping the future of open AI.

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

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
2:25 Who’s making money when open models are free?
4:08 Licenses, revenue sharing, and the Alibaba cloud advantage
8:10 What founders should check before building on open models
10:34 Why the harness matters (and why no one can evaluate it)
13:19 Buying GPUs vs. renting inference
16:20 What happens if Chinese models become the default?
22:19 Beyond language: Nemotron, bio models, and the case for an American open frontier
24:52 The OpenCode attack and the pressure to close up
28:38 Obliterated models: defenders’ tool or attackers’ gift?
34:12 How small startups can protect themselves
35:42 Outro