Exec accused of stealing Waymo’s trade secrets starts new self-driving company

Enlarge / Anthony Levandowski, then VP of engineering at Uber, speaking to reporters at the Uber Advanced Technologies Center on September 13, 2016 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (credit: ANGELO MERENDINO/AFP/Getty Images)

Anthony Levandowski, one of the most controversial figures in the self-driving car business, is connected to a new driverless truck startup, TechCrunch has reported. Called Kache.ai, the company is still in stealth mode, so little is known about its technology or business model.

What we do know is that Kache’s incorporation documents list an address in St. Helena, California that—according to TechCrunch—is owned by Levandowski’s father and stepmother. “Kǎchē” is “truck” in Chinese.

We also know a lot about Levandowski. He was involved in the DARPA Grand Challenge competitions more than a decade ago. Later, he was a key figure in Google’s self-driving car program before he left to start the self-driving truck startup Otto in 2016. Within months of its founding, Otto was acquired by Uber, and Levandowski was put in charge of Uber’s driverless car program.