[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.

[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.

[17] In 2003, Levandowski and fellow Berkeley engineers, as the "Blue Team", started building an autonomous motorcycle, nicknamed Ghostrider, for the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge.

[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.

To meet Larry Page's target of capturing 1,000,000 kilometres (620,000 mi) of roadways before the end of 2007, Levandowski ordered 100 Toyota Priuses from a local dealership.

The Topcon box was designed by 510 Systems, a start-up co-founded by Levandowski in early 2007 alongside Pierre-Yves Droz and Andrew Schultz.

[25][18] The PriBot was "a self-driving Toyota Prius with one of the first spinning Lidar laser ranging units and the first-ever to drive on public roads.

"[24] For the show footage, the police cleared the road and escorted the driverless Prius on a pre-determined route from San Francisco across the Bay Bridge.

[27] Levandowski continued to work as a technical lead on Google's self-driving car project alongside Chris Urmson, Dmitri Dolgov, and Mike Montemerlo until January 2016, when he left to launch Otto.

In addition to Project Chauffeur, Levandowski's contributions to Google include work on Street View, Cardboard, Telepresence, Ground Truth, Oblique Aerial Imagery, and Tiramisu.

[34] In 2015, Levandowski established a religious organisation called Way of the Future with the stated intention of creating a god with "Christian morals" through artificial intelligence.

The panel found that Levandowski owed Google $179 million—$120 million accounted for the salary he received while at the company, and the remainder for interest and legal fees accrued.

According to a court document, "The indemnification agreement was structured to ensure that Mr. Levandowski would not be left unprotected against Google, which had inexhaustible resources to attack Mr.

However, in April 2018, days before the final arbitration hearing that resulted in Levandowski owing Google $179 million, Uber informed him it would be seeking reimbursement for his defense costs, arguing he had breached their agreement by refusing to testify.

[53] In March 2017, United States District Judge William Alsup referred the civil case to federal prosecutors, citing the Economic Espionage Act of 1996[54] after Levandowski exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

[57][58] In April 2022, the settlement agreement faced objections from the U.S. Department of Justice and California’s Internal Revenue Service over the tax implications for Levandowski’s estate.

[59] 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.

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.

[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.