Uber and Waymo settle dispute
- February 12, 2018
- Posted by: Alan Feldberg
- Category: Industry News
Uber and Waymo have reached a settlement over claims Uber stole trade secrets from the self-driving company.
As part of the agreement, Uber is giving a 0.34% Uber stake to Waymo, worth approximately $245m (£177m). Uber has also agreed not to use Waymo’s technology in its self-driving cars, though it maintains it never did.
Uber’s chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, expressed ‘regret’ over the way his company had handled the issue. In a statement, he said, ‘While we won’t agree on everything going forward, we agree that Uber’s acquisition of Otto could and should have been handled differently.”
Otto was a self-driving trucking company co-founded by former Google employee Anthony Levandowski. It was acquired by Uber for $650m in 2016.
The deal comes after four days in a San Francisco federal court in which former Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick took the stand, accused of orchestrating a plan to steal more than 14,000 confidential files from Waymo when the firm was still part of Google.
Waymo is now owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet
