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On his last full day in office, Donald Trump forgave Anthony Levandowski, the engineer at the center of Waymo’s epic 2017 trade secret battle with Uber. Last year, Levandowski pleaded guilty to stealing a single confidential document from Google; prosecutors agreed to drop other pending charges against him.
Levandowski was one of the first important members of Google’s autonomous car project, but he left Google in early 2016 to found his own autonomous startup. Within a few months, the startup was acquired by Uber for a sum of nine digits, and Levandowski was put in charge of Uber’s autonomous driving efforts.
But then, Google’s autonomous unit – now known as Waymo – accused Levandowski of stealing trade secrets. According to Waymo, Levandowski downloaded thousands of confidential Google documents in his final days as a Google employee. Waymo says he was informed about the theft after Uber submitted a project for a circuit board to deal with a third-party supplier – a supplier also used by Waymo. Uber’s design looked almost identical to Waymo’s.
Waymo sued Uber for theft. When Levandowski invoked the Fifth Amendment instead of testifying in the civil case, Uber fired him. Waymo and Uber settled their lawsuit in early 2018. Levandowski was finally ordered to pay Waymo $ 179 million, forcing him to declare bankruptcy.
Federal prosecutors accused Levandowski of 30 criminal cases related to theft of trade secrets. After Levandowski’s guilty plea, a judge sentenced him to 18 months in prison in August.
Levandowski argued that he had health problems that put him in particular danger due to COVID-19. Therefore, the judge allowed Levandowski to postpone the execution of his sentence until the end of the pandemic. Now, Trump’s forgiveness means that Levandowski won’t have to serve a single day in prison.
According to the White House’s pardon announcement, Levandowski had a series of well-connected supporters. The list included PayPal co-founder and Facebook’s first financier, Peter Thiel, and Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey. These men were two of the most prominent figures in Silicon Valley to support Donald Trump during the 2016 election.
According to Trump’s pardon announcement, Levandowski “paid a significant price for his actions and plans to devote his talents to promoting the public good”. Levandowski will probably now focus on Pronto, an autonomous truck startup he co-founded in 2018.