2/25/23 | Uber Freight 1st *SEARCH*
Uber Freight CEO 'Lior Ron' graduated in 1997 and from there joined Israeli Army Intelligence where he served until 2004
Lior Ron
(born March 16, 1977) is an Israeli-born businessman. He served in the Israel Defense Forces from 1997 to 2004, before attending Stanford to pursue a MBA.[1] In 2016 he co-founded Otto, a self-driving truck company, with Anthony Levandowski, Claire Delaunay and Don Burnette.[2] Prior to Otto he was the Product Lead for Google Maps and then the Product Lead for Motorola Mobility, which was acquired by Google in 2011.[3]
Lior appears to be very trustworthy…..jk
Early life and career
In 1994 Ron entered The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, where he earned a bachelor's degree in Computer Science.[4] He graduated in 1997 and from there joined Israeli Army Intelligence where he served until 2004. He left the Israeli Army to attend The Stanford Graduate School of Business where he earned his MBA.[1] Then in 2007 he joined Google as the Product Lead for Google Maps. According to The New York Times, “he also worked in the company’s Motorola mobile phone business for three years and then in its secretive robotics research effort.”[5]
Recent career
In 2016 Ron left Google to found Otto, a company that makes self-driving kits to retrofit big rig trucks.[6] Quoted in Wired, Ron said he left Google because he “felt an obligation to bring this technology to society sooner rather than later.”[7] Otto launched in May, 2016 and was acquired by Uber in late July the same year.[8] The Uber partnership allowed Ron and Otto the opportunity to develop a freight marketplace for truck drivers.[9] In March 2018, Ron left Uber but returned in August 2018.[10]
On May 18, 2017, Ron and Uber launched Uber Freight, an app for long-haul truck drivers.[11] The Uber Freight app is "targeted towards vetted and approved drivers, who can browse for nearby available loads, see destination info, distance required and payment upfront and then tap to book."[12]
Controversy
Ron co-founded Otto with Anthony Levandowski, who faces a lawsuit from Google's parent company Alphabet that alleges Levandowski stole trade secrets while working for Alphabet's self-driving car division before he and Ron co-founded Otto.[13]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lior_Ron_(business_executive)
The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
(Hebrew: הטכניון – מכון טכנולוגי לישראל; Arabic: التخنيون - معهد إسرائيل للتكنولوجيا) is a public research university located in Haifa, Israel. Established in 1912 under the dominion of the Ottoman Empire, the Technion is the oldest university in the country.[7] The Technion is ranked as one of the top universities in both Israel and the Middle East, and in the world's top 100 universities in the 2022 Academic Ranking of World Universities.[8]
The university offers degrees in science and engineering, and related fields such as architecture, medicine, industrial management, and education. It has 19 academic departments, 60 research centers, and 12 affiliated teaching hospitals.[9] Since its founding, it has awarded more than 123,000 degrees[10] and its graduates are cited for providing the skills and education behind the creation and protection of the State of Israel.[11][12]
Technion's 565 faculty members include three Nobel Laureates in chemistry. Four Nobel Laureates have been associated with the university. The current president of the Technion is Uri Sivan.[13]
The selection of Hebrew as the language of instruction, defeating German in the War of the Languages, was an important milestone in Hebrew's consolidation as Israel's official language.[14] The Technion is also a major factor behind the growth of Israel's high-tech industry and innovation, including the country's technical cluster in Silicon Wadi.[15][16]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technion_%E2%80%93_Israel_Institute_of_Technology
Anthony Levandowski
(born March 15, 1980) is a French-American self-driving car engineer.[1] In 2009, Levandowski co-founded Google's self-driving car program, now known as Waymo, and was a technical lead until 2016.[2][3] In 2016, he co-founded and sold Otto, an autonomous trucking company, to Uber Technologies.[4][5] 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.[6][7] 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.[8]
In 2019, Levandowski was indicted on 33 federal charges of alleged theft of self-driving car trade secrets.[9] In August 2020, Levandowski pled guilty to one of the 33 charges, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.[10][11][12][13] He was pardoned less than six months later on January 20, 2021, the last day of Donald Trump's presidency.[14] In September, 2021 Levandowski rejoined Pronto as CEO; subsequently announcing the company's new offroad autonomous division.[15]
Early life and education
Levandowski was born on March 15, 1980, in Brussels, Belgium to a French diplomat mother and an American businessman. He moved to California in the mid-1990s. During his teenage years, he developed websites for local businesses.[3]
In 1998, Levandowski entered the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.[16] As a freshman, he founded La Raison, an intranet and IT services company that made fifty thousand dollars in its first year.[17][3] His sophomore year, Levandowski built the BillSortBot, a robot made from 300 Lego pieces that sorted Monopoly money for the Sun Microsoft robotics competition. He won first place.[17] In 2003, Levandowski launched Construction Control Systems with Randy Miller to build WorkTop, a portable blueprint reader and updater for construction sites.[17]
In 2003, Levandowski and fellow Berkeley engineers, aka the "Blue Team", started building an autonomous motorcycle, nicknamed Ghost Rider, for the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge.[18] The Ghost Rider motorcycle was originally a Honda RX. It was built over several years for an estimated $100,000 and competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004 and 2005. It was the only autonomous two-wheeled vehicle in the competitions.[19] The motorcycle was retrofitted with video cameras, computers, a GPS receiver, an IMU, and motors to power the clutch and steering.[20] As the team lead, participation in the DARPA Grand Challenge paved the way for Levandowski to build PriBot, the first self-driving car to drive on public roads.[21] In 2007, Levandowski donated the Ghost Rider to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, where it now resides.[21][3]
Criminal conviction and pardon
On August 27, 2019, Levandowski was charged by the Department of Justice for the alleged theft of trade secrets from Google's self-driving unit Waymo. In months before he left Google, the charges alleged Levandowski downloaded thousands of files from Waymo's predecessor, Project Chauffeur. The data allegedly included "critical engineering information about the hardware used on Project Chauffeur self-driving vehicles," and that Levandowski transferred files onto his laptop before leaving the company. Following the indictment, Pronto, a new self-driving trucking company that Levandowski co-founded, announced that its Chief Safety Officer, Robbie Miller, would take over as CEO.[60]
On March 19, 2020, Levandowski agreed to plead guilty to one of the thirty-three charges initially brought against him by the Department of Justice. Originally charged with stealing documents containing trade secrets, technical specifications, and Lidar design, Levandowski's pleaded guilty to downloading an internal project tracking document called, "Chauffeur TL Weekly – Q4 2015"—a spreadsheet consisting of team goals, project metrics, and weekly status updates accessible by Levandowski's team on an unsecured Google Drive. Levandowski admitted to accessing the document about one month after leaving Google in February 2016.[61][62][63]
On August 4, 2020, Levandowski formally pleaded guilty to one count of trade secret theft, and Judge William Alsup sentenced him to 18 months in prison. Prosecutors agreed to drop the remaining 32 charges as a part of the plea agreement.[64][65][66][67][68] During the sentencing, Alsup said, "this is the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen. This was not small. This was massive in scale."[64] He also described Levandowski as a "brilliant, groundbreaking engineer that our country needs. We need those people with vision. I'm going to give him that."[69] In addition to time served, Levandowski was ordered to pay $756,499.22 in restitution to Waymo and a fine of $95,000.[70]