#Dmitri Dolgov

[monterplant]

An interview with Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov on Tesla fans' claims that Waymo's software relies on hand-coded rules, can't handle freeway driving, and more (Timothy B Lee/Understanding AI)

Timothy B Lee / Understanding AI: An interview with Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov on Tesla fans’ claims that Waymo’s software relies on hand-coded rules, can’t handle freeway driving, and more  —  I talked to Dmitri Dolgov, co-CEO of Waymo.  —  This evening, Elon Musk will take the stage in Los Angeles for an event titled “We Robot.” Continue reading An interview with Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov on…

[thebusinessmagnate]

Tekedra and Dmitri: Trailblazing Co-CEOs Leading Autonomous Driving Tech at Waymo for Efficient Transport

We all must have thought about this at least once in our lives. Driverless rides. How it would feel to sit in a car and to be driven to your destination without a driver behind the wheel. Like in the fictional movies, where they used to show rich businessmen traveling in driverless cars, fully autonomous, and voice-activated even! Well, once just a dream and fiction, is now a reality. 

Presenting autonomous driving, manufacturers and engineers around the globe collaborate with experienced professionals in other brands and organizations in bringing out projects envisioning a world that could one day start having autonomous driving technology, and it would become the ‘new normal’. 

Sustainability initiatives, Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR), and environmentally conscious practices are being adopted by organizations with a mission aimed toward achieving zero carbon emissions, decreasing pollution levels and greenhouse gases, and reducing the reliability of fueled vehicles. This transitional shift towards a more clean, green, and renewable-powered source is already taking place with electric vehicles. The next step in technology innovation is being targeted towards manufacturing and engineering fully autonomous cars that are driverless. 

Autonomous driving technology integrates both hardware and software systems to achieve its mission. With machine learning (ML) systems and Artificial Intelligence (AI), sensors, processors, and algorithms, these cars are engineered to map out and store details of their environments and surroundings, using high-definition mapping and radar imaging, decision-making technology, and environmental perceptions. The common aims that automotive manufacturers and engineers who work on autonomous driving technology projects are to accomplish certain goals, such as – reducing road accidents, eliminating man-made errors, reducing traffic congestion, improving mobility and transport, and encouraging sustainability initiatives and practices. 

Therefore in this article, we will be sharing insights into the explorative story behind one such company – WAYMO, which was founded in 2009 in California, USA. The Co-founders – Anthony Levandowski and Sebastian Thrun initially led Google’s self-driving car program as part of Alphabet. The present co-CEOs – Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov took over and are now together leading Waymo, in its mission – “to make it safe and easy for people and things to get where they’re going using autonomous driving technology��. The trailblazing duo is paving the path for efficient transportation and mobility with self-driving cars for future generations to experience on their roads. 

About Tekedra and Dmitri – co-CEOs at Waymo:

The co-CEOs at Waymo are – Tekedra N. Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov. Both of them came into office and were appointed in the year 2021. The headquarters of Waymo is established and located in Mountain View, California, USA.

Tekedra Mawakana’s education was a Bachelor’s Degree of Arts in Political Science, Economics, and Women’s Studies from Trinity Washington University. She also has a Doctor of Law Degree from Columbia Law School. Tekedra has a career working in various companies in leading positions such as – Associate, Board Director, Senior Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, and Advisory Council. Joining Waymo in 2017, she climbed the professional ladder quickly and worked as the Chief External Officer (CXO), Chief Operating Officer, and Board of Directors, and then was promoted to co-CEO alongside Dmitri, in the year 2021. Leading the company with years of experience in leadership, technology, automotive, mobility, and entrepreneurial sectors, Tekedra has been a powerful influence in the industry. 

Dmitri Dolgov is the co-CEO alongside Tekedra Mawakana at Waymo. Having a Master’s Degree in Physics and Maths from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and a Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of Michigan. After being Google’s distinguished Software Engineer heading software in the company’s self-driving car project and the Chief Technology Officer, Dmitri was appointed as co-CEO at Waymo. 

These two influential pioneers and co-CEOs are successfully leading the “World’s Most Experienced Driver”. 

About WAYMO:

Waymo was originally co-founded by Anthony Levandowski and Sebastian Thrun, as a project and program in self-driving cars under Google’s Alphabet. Waymo was founded in the year 2009 and is established in California, USA. 

Waymo One is “The World’s First Autonomous ride-hailing service.” Available all day and night to pick you up and drop you at your destination, Waymo One meets you at whichever part of the city you are in, such as – San Francisco and Phoenix. This self-driving ride-hailing service provided by the company offers people the needed convenience, consistency, and safety. The autonomous car is completely electrically powered which is sustainable to the environment and the ecosystem. 

Waymo shares that there have been over 1.35 million recorded vehicular deaths where drivers have crashed, out of which around 36,096 road deaths were recorded in 2019, in the United States alone. The company states that 94% of car crashes are due to human-made errors. Hence with the commitment to safely take care of the passengers inside and outside the cars, Waymo has provided the people with safety and ease in getting them wherever they want to go. To reach and engage more with the people, and to be available and easily accessible, Waymo has developed an app downloadable on the Apple Store as well as Google Play. Therefore with Waymo, “the future of transportation is here”.

Visit More : https://thebusinessmagnate.com/tekedra-and-dmitri-trailblazing-co-ceos-leading-autonomous-driving-tech-at-waymo-for-efficient-transport/

[self-driving-cars-360]

Waymo starts fully driverless testing in LA Read more: https://www.selfdrivingcars360.com/waymo-starts-fully-driverless-testing-in-la/

[managermint]

TechCrunch: Aptiv’s Karl Iagnemma at TC Sessions: Mobility July 10 in San Jose

TechCrunch: Aptiv’s Karl Iagnemma at TC Sessions: Mobility July 10 in San Jose

Before automakers and giant tech companies kicked off their own autonomous vehicle pilots, a startup called nuTonomy launched a self-driving taxi service in Singapore for the public, not just its test engineers.

The AV industry took notice; and by October 2017 it was snapped up for $450 million by Aptiv, U.S. auto supplier and self-driving software company formerly known as Delphi.

We’re…

[mariacallous]

Metropolitan Opera Nightly Streams for this week

Hi, here's this week's opera update. (I hope it's not too long.)

First, though, the weekend's streams might work a little while yet.

If you missed it, I HIGHLY recommend checking out of Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, a charming romantic comedy with a catchy, upbeat score (streamed Saturday night). Directed by Bartlett Sher, featuring Matthew Polenzani, Anna Netrebko, and Mariusz Kwiecien, 2012. (I prefer the newer version with Pretty Yende, who is subtler than Anna Netrebko, but this cast is fun too). https://www.metopera.org/season/on-demand/opera/?upc=811357015681 [or] https://metoperafree.brightcove-services.com/?videoId=6240743388001

Sunday night's stream of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde is a moody, atmospheric modern production (seems vaguely 20th century?) and very long (about 4 hrs 20 min), but has a strong cast and iconic music. It's tragic and slow-paced, but kind of mesmerizing. (Nina Stemme and Stuart Skelton, 2016) https://www.metopera.org/season/on-demand/opera/?upc=811357018729 [or] https://metoperafree.brightcove-services.com/?videoId=6240750335001

This week the Met Opera is featuring "Page to Stage" - operas adapted from literature. More information about the listings here: https://www.metopera.org/user-information/nightly-met-opera-streams/week-56/

Tonight until 6:30 pm Tuesday, April 6 - Gounod's Faust (2011), starring Marina Poplavskaya, Jonas Kaufmann, and Rene Pape; set in the first half of the 20th century, with Faust as a nuclear scientist. https://www.metopera.org/season/on-demand/opera/?upc=811357015018 [or] https://metoperafree.brightcove-services.com/?videoId=6245234841001

Tuesday night, 4/6 - Verdi's Rigoletto (1981) featuring Christiane Eda-Pierre, Isola Jones, Luciano Pavarotti, Louis Quilico, and Ara Berberian

Wednesday night, 4/7 - Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin (2017), Starring Anna Netrebko, Elena Maximova, Alexey Dolgov, Peter Mattei, and Štefan Kocán

Thursday night, 4/8 - Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini (1984), Starring Renata Scotto, Plácido Domingo, and Cornell MacNeil; this is the same Art Nouveau-inspired production that was shown a few weeks ago with a more recent cast (Eva-Maria Westbroek, Marcello Giordani, Mark Delavan, 2013). If you missed that one and/or you're a fan of Dante's Inferno, check this one out, although it's not in high definition.

Friday night, 4/9 - Shostakovich's The Nose (2013), Starring Andrey Popov, Alexander Lewis, and Paulo Szot. I haven't seen this one, but it's about a man who wakes up one day and finds that his nose is missing... sounds wild. 

Saturday night, 4/10 - Gounod's Romeo et Juliette (2007), starring Anna Netrebko, Roberto Alagna, Nathan Gunn, and Robert Lloyd. This production has lovely Renaissance-inspired sets and costumes, except the two leads have more modern-looking costumes (Juliet looks great, Romeo looks a bit silly sometimes). 

Sunday night, 4/11 - Verdi's Luisa Miller (2018), Starring Sonya Yoncheva, Olesya Petrova, Piotr Beczała, Plácido Domingo, Alexander Vinogradov, and Dmitry Belosselskiy

[amztech]

Waymo’s way forward with Dmitri Dolgov (Waymo)

[news-venue]

Alphabet's Waymo to offer driverless rides in San Francisco

Self-driving car unit of Google’s parent company will also expand its Waymo One service in Arizona

Waymo, the self-driving car arm of Google’s parent company Alphabet, will begin to offer driverless rides in San Francisco as it tries to match General Motors.

The company said that it started the service by using a fully-autonomous, all-electric Jaguar I-Pace, with no driver behind the wheel, to pick up a Waymo engineer “to get their morning coffee and go to work”, it said in a blog post on its website.

California-based Waymo said on March 21 — six months since it started offering rides to San Franciscans as their first “trusted testers” — that it was ready to take the next steps and begin testing fully autonomous operations in the city. The company is going going head-to-head with GM’s autonomous unit Cruise, which announced its own driverless rides last month.

“We’ve learnt so much from our San Francisco trusted testers over the last six months, not to mention the innumerable lessons from our riders in the years since launching our fully autonomous service in the East Valley of Phoenix,” Tekedra Mawakana, co-chief executive of Waymo, said in the post.

“Both of which have directly impacted how we bring forward our service as we welcome our first employee riders in San Francisco.”

Competition to offer driverless services as part of the next generation of transport is picking up. The autonomous car market was valued at $22.22 billion in 2021 and is projected to hit $75.95bn by 2027, according to Mordor Intelligence. North America is the biggest market, while the Asia-Pacific is the fastest in terms of growth.

Overall, the global autonomous car market could be worth about $2 trillion a year by 2030, analysts at UBS said.

Waymo has been testing its driverless technology in the San Franciso Bay Area — a city with challenging traffic conditions — along with rivals Cruise and Amazon’s Zoox, over the past four to six years.

The companies have used vehicles customised with sensor technologies including Lidar — light detection and ranging — to detect people, other vehicles and road obstacles.

Safety and potential accidents, however, are still very much a concern. Waymo itself was embroiled in an accident when one of its I-Paces struck a pedestrian in San Francisco in December, causing injuries. In June, one of its cars hit a scooter in the city, but no injuries were reported.

A month before that, a car from Tesla, the world’s biggest electric vehicle manufacturer, crashed and burst into flames in Houston while the car was driving on its Autopilot system, killing two people aboard it.

Waymo, however, pledged that it was taking steps to avoid accidents with its technology that is backed by “millions of miles of real-world driving and boosted by billions of miles driven in simulation”, its co-chief executive Dmitri Dolgov said.

“These important steps all help bring us closer to our mission of making it safer and easier for people and things to get where they’re going,” Waymo added.

Waymo already offers autonomous rides in the East Valley of Phoenix, Arizona, with its Waymo One platform. This began with an early rider programme in 2017, followed by introducing fully-autonomous public rides in 2020. It claims to be serving hundreds of rides weekly with the app-based service, which it said will be expanded to downtown Phoenix.

“Just as we’ve done before, we’ll start with Waymo employees hailing trips with autonomous specialists behind the wheel, with the goal of opening it up to members of the public via our trusted tester programme soon after,” Waymo said in the blog.

Cruise, meanwhile, said earlier this month that it was investing another $3.45 billion in the unit after SoftBank Group’s Vision Fund exited its bet on the subsidiary backed by GM and Honda Motor. A year ago, it announced that it would launch its first international robotaxi service outside the US in Dubai in 2023.

[fancyhints]

Waymo CEO John Krafcik steps down, replaced by two co-CEOs Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Waymo CEO John Krafcik has announced that he’ll be stepping down from his role as CEO. Tekedra Mawakana, Waymo’s chief operating officer, and Dmitri Dolgov, the company’s chief technology officer, will work jointly as co-CEOs going forward. Krafcik didn’t provide a detailed explanation for his departure or what he’s planning on doing next. “After five and a half exhilarating years leading this team, I’ve decided to depart from my CEO role with Waymo and kick-off new adventures. To start, I’m looking forward to a refresh period, reconnecting with old friends and family, and discovering new parts of the world,” he commented in a blog post announcing the move. In a statement to employees obtained by CNBC, Mawakana and Dolgov... Continue reading… https://fancyhints.com/waymo-ceo-john-krafcik-steps-down-replaced-by-two-co-ceos/?utm_source=tumblr&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost

[orbemnews]

The Costly Pursuit of Self-Driving Cars Continues On. And On. And On. It was seven years ago when Waymo discovered that spring blossoms made its self-driving cars get twitchy on the brakes. So did soap bubbles. And road flares. New tests, in years of tests, revealed more and more distractions for the driverless cars. Their road skills improved, but matching the competence of human drivers was elusive. The cluttered roads of America, it turned out, were a daunting place for a robot. The wizards of Silicon Valley said people would be commuting to work in self-driving cars by now. Instead, there have been court fights, injuries and deaths, and tens of billions of dollars spent on a frustratingly fickle technology that some researchers say is still years from becoming the industry’s next big thing. Now the pursuit of autonomous cars is undergoing a reset. Companies like Uber and Lyft, worried about blowing through their cash in pursuit of autonomous technology, have tapped out. Only the deepest-pocketed outfits like Waymo, which is a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet; auto giants; and a handful of start-ups are managing to stay in the game. The tech and auto giants could still toil for years on their driverless car projects. Each will spend an additional $6 billion to $10 billion before the technology becomes commonplace — sometime around the end of the decade, according to estimates from Pitchbook, a research firm that tracks financial activity. But even that prediction might be overly optimistic. “This is a transformation that is going to happen over 30 years and possibly longer,” said Chris Urmson, an early engineer on the Google self-driving car project before it became the Alphabet business unit called Waymo. He is now chief executive of Aurora, the company that acquired Uber’s autonomous vehicle unit. So what went wrong? Some researchers would say nothing — that’s how science works. You can’t entirely predict what will happen in an experiment. The self-driving car project just happened to be one of the most hyped technology experiments of this century, occurring on streets all over the country and run by some of its highest-profile companies. That hype drew billions of dollars of investments, but it set up unrealistic expectations. In 2015, the electric carmaker Tesla’s billionaire boss, Elon Musk, said fully functional self-driving cars were just two years away. More than five years later, Tesla cars offered simpler autonomy designed solely for highway driving. Even that has been tinged with controversy after several fatal crashes (which the company blamed on misuse of the technology). Perhaps no company experienced the turbulence of driverless car development more fitfully than Uber. After poaching 40 robotics experts from Carnegie Mellon University and acquiring a self-driving truck start-up for $680 million in stock, the ride-hailing company settled a lawsuit from Waymo, which was followed by a guilty plea from a former executive accused of stealing intellectual property. A pedestrian in Arizona was killed in a crash with one of its driverless cars. In the end, Uber essentially paid Aurora to acquire its self-driving unit. But for the deepest-pocketed companies, the science, they hope, continues to advance one improved ride at a time. In October, Waymo reached a notable milestone: It started the world’s first “fully autonomous” taxi service. In the suburbs of Phoenix, anyone can now ride in a minivan with no driver behind the wheel. But that does not mean the company will immediately deploy its technology in other parts of the country. Dmitri Dolgov, who recently took over as Waymo’s co-chief executive after the departure of John Krafcik, an automobile industry veteran, said the company considered its Arizona service a test case. Based on what it has learned in Arizona, he said, Waymo is building a new version of its self-driving technology that it will eventually deploy in other places and other kinds of vehicles, including long-haul trucks. The suburbs of Phoenix are particularly well suited to driverless cars. Streets are wide, pedestrians are few, and there is almost no rain or snow. Waymo supports its autonomous vehicles with remote technicians and roadside assistance crews who can help get cars out of a tight spot, either via the internet or in person. “Autonomous vehicles can be deployed today, in certain situations,” said Elliot Katz, a former lawyer who counseled many of the big autonomous vehicle companies before launching a start-up, Phantom Auto, that provides software for remotely assisting and operating self-driving vehicles when they get stuck in difficult positions. “But you still need a human in the loop.” Self-driving tech is not yet nimble enough to reliably handle the variety of situations human drivers encounter each day. It can usually handle suburban Phoenix, but it can’t duplicate the human chutzpah needed for merging into the Lincoln Tunnel in New York or dashing for an offramp on Highway 101 in Los Angeles. “You have to peel back every layer before you can see the next layer” of challenges for the technology, said Nathaniel Fairfield, a Waymo software engineer who has worked on the project since 2009, describing some of the distractions faced by the cars. “Your car has to be pretty good at driving before you can really get it into the situations where it handles the next most challenging thing.” Like Waymo, Aurora is now developing autonomous trucks as well as passenger vehicles. No company has deployed trucks without safety drivers behind the wheel, but Mr. Urmson and others argue that autonomous trucks will make it to market faster than anything designed to transport regular consumers. Long-haul trucking does not involve passengers who might not be forgiving of twitchy brakes. The routes are also simpler. Once you master one stretch of highway, Mr. Urmson said, it is easier to master another. But even driving down a long, relatively straight highway is extraordinarily difficult. Delivering dinner orders across a small neighborhood is an even greater challenge. “This is one of the biggest technical challenges of our generation,” said Dave Ferguson, another early engineer on the Google team who is now president of Nuro, a company focused on delivering groceries, pizzas and other goods. Mr. Ferguson said many thought self-driving technology would improve like an internet service or a smartphone app. But robotics is a lot more challenging. It was wrong to claim anything else. “If you look at almost every industry that is trying to solve really, really difficult technical challenges, the folks that tend to be involved are a little bit crazy and little bit optimistic,” he said. “You need to have that optimism to get up every day and bang your head against the wall to try to solve a problem that has never been solved, and it’s not guaranteed that it ever will be solved.” Uber and Lyft aren’t entirely giving up on driverless cars. Even though it may not help the bottom line for a long time, they still want to deploy autonomous vehicles by teaming up with the companies that are still working on the technology. Lyft now says autonomous rides could arrive by 2023. “These cars will be able to operate on a limited set of streets under a limited set of weather conditions at certain speeds,” said Jody Kelman, an executive at Lyft. “We will very safely be able to deploy these cars, but they won’t be able to go that many places.” Source link Orbem News #Cars #continues #Costly #Pursuit #selfdriving

[self-driving-cars-360]

(video) Taking a rider-only trip with the Waymo Driver in San Francisco Read more: https://www.selfdrivingcars360.com/video-taking-a-rider-only-trip-with-the-waymo-driver-in-san-francisco/

[managermint]

TechCrunch: The road ahead for Waymo, AV engineering and mobility, with Waymo CTO Dmitri Dolgov

TechCrunch: The road ahead for Waymo, AV engineering and mobility, with Waymo CTO Dmitri Dolgov

Earlier this month, TechCrunch held its annual Mobility Sessions event down in San Jose, where leading mobility-focused auto companies, startups, executives and thought leaders joined us to discuss all things autonomous vehicle technology, micromobility and electric vehicles.

Extra Crunch is offering members access to full transcripts key panels and conversations from the event, including a…

[noticiasq]

Waymo perderá su director financiero y director de asociaciones automotrices

Nueva Noticia publicada en https://noticiasq.com/waymo-perdera-su-director-financiero-y-director-de-asociaciones-automotrices/

Waymo perderá su director financiero y director de asociaciones automotrices

El director financiero de Waymo, Ger Dwyer, y su director de asociaciones automotrices y desarrollo corporativo, Adam Frost, dos ejecutivos de larga data en la compañía de vehículos autónomos, se van este mes, salidas que se producen en medio de algunos cambios ejecutivos tras la salida del director ejecutivo John Krafcik a principios de este año.

La partida de Dwyer y Frost se compartió internamente esta semana, según múltiples fuentes. Waymo ha confirmado a TechCrunch que Dwyer y Frost se van.

«Estamos agradecidos con Ger y Adam por todo lo que han hecho por Waymo y les deseamos todo lo mejor», dijo un portavoz en un comunicado enviado por correo electrónico. «Se está realizando una búsqueda ejecutiva de un nuevo director financiero que nos lleve a nuestro próximo capítulo a medida que continuamos construyendo, implementando y comercializando el controlador Waymo».

Dwyer, que reportaba directamente al equipo de finanzas de liderazgo ejecutivo de la empresa matriz Alphabet, se encuentra entre varios ejecutivos que dejaron la empresa en los últimos cinco meses. Krafcik anunció en abril que dejaría el cargo de director ejecutivo. La directora de seguridad, Deborah Hersman, se marchó en diciembre y Tim Willis, que era jefe de fabricación y suministro global y director general del negocio lidar Laser Bear de Waymo, partió en febrero. Sherry House, que había estado en Waymo desde 2017 y recientemente fue tesorera y directora de relaciones con los inversores, dejó la empresa en abril. Ahora es directora financiera de Lucid Motors.

Aún así, algunos de los líderes críticos, y las personas directamente debajo de ellos, se han mantenido. Tekedra Mawakana, quien era director de operaciones, y Dmitri Dolgov, el director de tecnología, ahora son codirectores ejecutivos de Waymo y parecen contar con el apoyo del director ejecutivo de Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, según unas breves declaraciones que hizo durante la llamada de resultados del primer trimestre de la compañía. Los jefes de departamento directamente debajo de Mawakana y Dolgov todavía están en Waymo con algunas excepciones, según los perfiles de LinkedIn. En marzo, tanto David Twohig, quien era director de Future Automotive en Waymo, como Qi Hommes, quien una vez fue jefe de seguridad del sistema, se fueron. Hommes es ahora director de análisis e ingeniería de seguridad de sistemas en Zoox, según LinkedIn.

La salida de Dwyer también se produce en un momento en que la demanda de directores financieros se ha disparado junto con la serie continua de ofertas públicas, incluidas las realizadas a través de fusiones con empresas de adquisición con fines especiales. La mudanza de House a Lucid Motors, que se hará pública a través de una fusión con una SPAC, es un ejemplo.

Dwyer es un empleado de Google desde hace mucho tiempo, que comenzó en la empresa en 2006. Dio el salto en agosto de 2016 a Waymo, solo unos meses antes de que el antiguo proyecto de conducción autónoma de Google anunciara oficialmente que se había convertido en una empresa bajo la dirección de la empresa matriz. empresa Alphabet.

Durante su mandato, Dwyer supervisó el aspecto financiero del negocio en un período de crecimiento explosivo que llevó a la empresa de unos pocos cientos de empleados a más de 2000 en la actualidad.

Frost, quien encabezó las asociaciones automotrices, también ha sido una figura importante en Waymo. Llegó al proyecto de conducción autónoma de Google en 2013 después de casi 17 años en Ford Motor Co., según los registros de LinkedIn. Inicialmente fue contratado como ingeniero jefe y luego ascendió de rango a director de programas y asociaciones automotrices y, finalmente, director de desarrollo corporativo y automotriz. Waymo se ha asegurado en una serie de lo que ha descrito como asociaciones exclusivas con fabricantes de automóviles en los últimos años, incluidos Volvo, Stellantis (antes FCA), así como una con Renault y Nissan para investigar cómo los vehículos comerciales autónomos podrían funcionar para pasajeros y paquetes en Francia y Japón.

Waymo también expandió su presencia geográfica más allá de California durante los períodos de Dwyer y Frost. La compañía llevó sus vehículos autónomos a ciudades como Austin y Kirkland, Washington para realizar pruebas y estableció operaciones en el suburbio de Chandler en Phoenix, donde ahora opera un servicio de transporte llamado Waymo One que usa vehículos sin conductor, así como aquellos con operadores de seguridad detrás del rueda.

El año pasado, Waymo completó su primera ronda externa de recaudación de fondos, que inicialmente fue de $ 2,25 mil millones y luego se expandió a $ 3 mil millones. La ronda de $ 2.250 millones fue liderada por Silver Lake con inversiones de la Junta de Inversiones del Plan de Pensiones de Canadá, Mubadala Investment Company, Magna, Andreessen Horowitz y AutoNation y su empresa matriz Alphabet. El capital ampliado provino de nuevos inversores, incluidos los gestionados por T. Rowe Price, Perry Creek Capital, Fidelity Management and Research Company y otros.

El aumento externo siguió a una oleada de actividad que sugirió que Waymo estaba aumentando su empresa comercial, incluida la expansión de su flota principal en Mountain View, California, el área de Phoenix y en Texas. Waymo también comenzó a ir más allá de sus pruebas de robotaxi y comenzó a probar nuevas aplicaciones comerciales para su tecnología de vehículos autónomos, como entrega y transporte, e incluso un plan para comenzar a vender sus sensores lidar personalizados a empresas de las industrias de robótica, seguridad y tecnología agrícola.

También ha hecho numerosos socios y al menos una adquisición bajo la dirección de Dwyer. Waymo adquirió en diciembre de 2019 una empresa del Reino Unido llamada Latent Logic que surgió del departamento de informática de la Universidad de Oxford. La compañía utiliza una forma de aprendizaje automático llamada aprendizaje por imitación que podría reforzar los esfuerzos de simulación de Waymo. La adquisición marcó el lanzamiento del primer centro de ingeniería europeo de Waymo en Oxford, Reino Unido.

[lindortech]

TC Sessions: Mobility announces its July 10 agenda

TC Sessions: Mobility announces its July 10 agenda

TechCrunch Sessions is heading to San Jose on July 10 and we’re thrilled to publish our jam-packed agenda, overflowing with some of the biggest names and most mind-blowing startups in the transportation industry. With Early-Bird ticket sales ending soon, you’ll want to be sure to grab your tickets after checking out this agenda.

Throughout the day, you can expect to hear from and partake in…

[uberlyftdrivers]

Waymo’s leadership shift spotlights self-driving car challenges

Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car subsidiary, has reshuffled its top executive lineup. John Krafcik, Waymo’s CEO since 2015, announced on April 2 that he would be stepping down from his role. Krafcik is being replaced by former COO Tekedra Mawakana and former CTO Dmitri Dolgov and will remain as an advisor to the company. “[With] the fully autonomous Waymo One ride-hailing service open to all in…

[thenwire]

Google Autonomous Division Waymo CEO resigns and moves to Austin, Texas

Google Autonomous Division Waymo CEO resigns and moves to Austin, Texas

Waymo CEO John Krafcik appeared on the center stage on the first day of the Web Summit 2017 at the Artis Arena in Lisbon. Photo: Stephen McCarthy / Web Summit via Sportsfile Waymo CEO John Krafcik has announced that he will resign and move to Austin, Texas. Waymo said Friday that Chief Technology Officer Dmitri Dolgov and Chief Operating Officer Tekedra Mawakanar will be co-CEOs and will take the…

[automobilesz]

Waymo just lost its CEO

Waymo CEO John Krafcik is leaving the self-driving technology company. Krafcik made the announcement last week via a LinkedIn post, where he said he was looking forward to some downtime, as well as a chance to flesh out a new project with his wife, Leila. Replacing Krafcik in joint CEO roles at Waymo will be Dmitri Dolgov, the company’s chief technology officer, and Tekedra Mawakana, the…