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(Bloomberg) – Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive of Uber Technologies Inc., said Thursday that "it certainly looks like" former executive Anthony Levandowski took information about the autonomous cars of his former employer, Google.
Prosecutors accused Levandowski this week of 33 counts of stealing trade secrets at Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo self-driving unit. The accusations revive a painful period for Uber when co-founder Travis Kalanick was still running the company. . Levandowski was fired by Uber and Kalanick subsequently resigned and was replaced by Khosrowshahi two years ago.
Uber finally settled a secret lawsuit against Waymo by paying about $ 245 million in shares. This year, when the San Francisco-based relocation company asked to be made public, Uber revealed that it may have to shell out an additional $ 127 million to cover Levandowski's obligations to the Alphabet unit. .
"I was not there when we invited Anthony aboard, but what I do know is that we went to incredible depths to make sure that any information that Anthony could have gotten from Google – and that looked like him, was not ". Do not talk to our society, "said Khosrowshahi in an interview with Bloomberg TV's Emily Chang." It was our responsibility and I think we've done incredible work to make sure we're not guilty of anything that could be harmful in one way or another. "
Now, the US Attorney's Office reopens this saga by filing lawsuits against Levandowski. Prosecutors said their investigation was ongoing. Levandowski pleaded not guilty and his lawyer stated that he had not stolen anything.
Today, Kalanick, who personally recruited Levandowski from Uber, sits on the board.
"He is on the board of directors at the moment and he will do it tomorrow," said Khosrowshahi. "In the end, we are a publicly traded company and shareholders will choose their own board of directors and this governance process will take care of in the future." Khosrowshahi called Kalanick "brilliant" and the CEO said that he consulted the co-founder from time to time.
In addition to reacting to past mistakes that continue to affect society, Khosrowshahi said that Uber was always willing to experiment and take risks. He said he would pull out of business units that were not carrying their weight, while investing in promising areas.
In particular, he said the company's delivery efforts would go beyond food in other areas of local commerce. The company has already launched grocery delivery efforts.
Uber shares have fallen 27% since the IPO in May due to concerns about losses. Earlier this month, the company announced a quarterly net loss of more than $ 5 billion.
Khosrowshahi said that in the short term, Uber could do nothing about the stock price. However, the CEO said the company would turn the business units into profitable operations and use that money to fund other efforts.
"Scale: Scale: It's growing when you have more than a billion trips a quarter, and travel is up 35% in one year," he added. "We think we can use technology to be more effective."
"Every big company has to go through difficult times – you look at Facebook, you look at Amazon, even five years after their IPO – all have had periods of business testing," he said. "This is the moment when Uber's courage is put to the test and I am confident that we will come out stronger than ever."
– With the help of Lizette Chapman and Candy Cheng.
To contact the reporters on this story: Eric Newcomer in New York at [email protected] and Emily Chang in San Francisco at [email protected]
To contact the makers of this story: Anne VanderMey at [email protected], Alistair Barr, Andrew Pollack
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