Lior Ron (born March 16, 1977) is an Israeli-born businessman. He served in the

Israel Defense Forces The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, and ...

from 1997 to 2004, before attending

Stanford Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth governor of and th ...

to pursue an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a professional degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration; elective courses may allow further study in a particular a ...

. In 2016 he co-founded

Otto Otto is a masculine German given name and a surname. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants '' Audo'', '' Odo'', '' Udo'') of Germanic names beginning in ''aud-'', an element meaning "wealth, prosperity". The name is recorded fr ...

, a self-driving truck company, with

Anthony Levandowski Anthony Levandowski (born March 15, 1980) is a French-American self-driving car engineer. In 2009, Levandowski co-founded Google's self-driving car program, known as Waymo, and was a technical lead until 2016. In 2010, he co-founded Google X al ...

, Claire Delaunay and Don Burnette. Prior to Otto he was the Product Lead for

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panorama, interactive panoramic views of streets (Google Street View, Street View ...

and then the Product Lead for

Motorola Mobility Motorola Mobility LLC, marketing as Motorola, is an American consumer electronics manufacturer primarily producing smartphones and other mobile devices running Android (operating system), Android. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese te ...

, which was acquired by

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

in 2011.

Early life and career

In 1994 Ron entered The

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is a public university, public research university located in Haifa, Israel. Established in 1912 by Jews under the dominion of the Ottoman Empire, the Technion is the oldest university in the coun ...

Haifa, Israel Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area in Israel. It is home to t ...

, where he earned a bachelor's degree in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

. He graduated in 1997 and from there joined Israeli Army Intelligence where he served until 2004. He left the Israeli Army to attend The

Stanford Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business is the Postgraduate education, graduate business school of Stanford University, a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective ...

where he earned his

. Then in 2007 he joined

as the Product Lead for

. According to

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

, “he also worked in the company’s Motorola mobile phone business for three years and then in its secretive robotics research effort.”

Recent career

In 2016 Ron left Google to found

, a company that makes self-driving kits to retrofit

big rig A semi-trailer truck (also known by a wide variety of other terms – see below) is the combination of a tractor unit and one or more semi-trailers to carry freight. A semi-trailer attaches to the tractor with a type of hitch called a ' ...

trucks. Quoted in

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

, Ron said he left Google because he “felt an obligation to bring this technology to society sooner rather than later.” Otto launched in May, 2016 and was acquired by

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...

in late July the same year. The Uber partnership allowed Ron and Otto the opportunity to develop a freight marketplace for truck drivers. In March 2018, Ron left Uber but returned in August 2018. On May 18, 2017, Ron and

launched Uber Freight, an app for long-haul truck drivers. The Uber Freight app is "targeted towards vetted and approved drivers, who can browse for nearby available loads, see destination info, distance required and payment upfront and then tap to book."

Controversy

Ron co-founded Otto with

, who faces a lawsuit from Google's parent company

Alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

that alleges Levandowski stole trade secrets while working for Alphabet's self-driving car division before he and Ron co-founded Otto.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ron, Lior 1977 births Silicon Valley people Living people Artificial intelligence researchers Machine learning researchers Businesspeople from the San Francisco Bay Area American technology company founders Google employees Stanford Graduate School of Business alumni