The former lead of Uber’s self-driving technology unit and the man at the center of the lawsuit between Uber and Google from a couple of years ago, Anthony Levandowski, has filed for bankruptcy protection.
In December, an arbitration panel ruled that Levandowski and colleague Lior Ron engaged in unfair competition and breached their legal obligations when they established Otto, a self-driving truck company, and brought over Google employees. Uber later acquired Levandowski’s startup and made him the head of its own autonomous vehicle efforts.
Under a court ruling, Levandowski must pay $179 million to Google to end the legal battle, Reuters reports. He has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy which means he will be able to negotiate debts. He has between $50 million and $100 million in estimated assets compared with $100 million to $500 million in liabilities.
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In recent financial filings, Uber says it expects to challenge paying the judgement against its ex-employee.
Lior Ron still works at Uber and settled with Google for $9.7 million last month. Alphabet’s self-driving unit Waymo confirmed earlier this week that Uber had paid the full amount that Ron owed.
Levandowski triggered headlines back in 2017 after Waymo sued Uber for using its technology in their autonomous driving efforts. It was alleged that Levandowski downloaded more than 14,000 files from Google before leaving the company and establishing Otto. The legal battle between Waymo and Uber ended in February 2018 when the ride-hailing giant agreed to give Waymo a $245 million stake in the company.
