Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
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Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
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Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#2I wonder if this includes the 'Fuck you money' engineers on project Chauffeur received for passing certain milestones. Earlier in the depositions it was disclosed that Levandowski was paid a 120 million dollar bonus, though it wasn't revealed how much was given to others on the project.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-13/one-reaso...
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#3And $120 million of that amount got paid to Anthony Levandovski?
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#4I wonder if this includes the 'Fuck you money' engineers on project Chauffeur received for passing certain milestones. Earlier in the depositions it was disclosed that Levandowski was paid a 120 million dollar bonus, though it wasn't revealed how much was given to others on the project. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-13/one-reaso...
Levandowski's $120M was an earn-out from the acquisition of his startup:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/t...
(Note the date: this is well before Otto and the Uber/Waymo flap.)
It probably is counted in the $1.1B spent on self-driving tech though.
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#5It is not really that much! 1.1 B in 6 years on a moonshot project.
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#6I wonder if this includes the 'Fuck you money' engineers on project Chauffeur received for passing certain milestones. Earlier in the depositions it was disclosed that Levandowski was paid a 120 million dollar bonus, though it wasn't revealed how much was given to others on the project. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-13/one-reaso...
Levandowski's $120M was an earn-out from the acquisition of his startup: https://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/t... (Note the date: this is well before Otto and the Uber/Waymo flap.) It probably is counted in the $1.1B spent on self-driving tech though.
It was disclosed in the depositions that the 510 systems acquisition was worth about $20 million:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/23/how-star-engi...
The bonuses were paid out at the end of 2015. It was shortly after that that Levandowski revealed Otto to the world. Plus Chris Urmson started Aurora, and Brian Salesky went on to become CEO of Argo, which is Ford's autonomous Driving subsidiary.
They all got some kind of huge bonus. It supposedly amounted to a 14% rise in the aggregated quarterly expenses of Alphabets 'other bets', which lumps together a bunch of Alphabet's moonshot subsidiaries.
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#7I think by most accounts -
1) Google / Waymo is by far the furthest ahead in self-driving tech.
2) Self-driving is possible in at least certain circumstances in the next decade or two (already is to an extent today).
3) Transportation / automobiles is an absolutely massive industry. Even companies like Dana, Inc (maker of axles) have $4bil valuations. It's easy to see how a self-driving tech maker would be worth far more than an axle maker.
4) Software tends to be a winner-take-most industry.
Given 1-4, $1.1B doesn't seem like much. Even if by chance it doesn't turn out to be a positive ROI, it seems crazy to think the $1.1B was a bad bet.
And given current prices for self-driving startups (example, Gm's acquisition of Cruise for >$1B), the current market value for Waymo would likely be >$10B.
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#8It is not really that much! 1.1 B in 6 years on a moonshot project.
Seriously, I'm mean what else are you going to do with a bit more than a billion dollars? Develop a full line of Google rockets and disrupt the space industry or something? :-)
But you raise an interesting point, what should we expect from 6 years of effort and 1.1B$ ?
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/586023main_8-3-11_NAFCOM.pdf
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/17-billion-dollar-companies-c...
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#9$94 billion in cash burning a hole in their pocket. $20x billion in new cash pouring in annually, expanding by 10%-20% per year.
In another two years they'll be net cash richer than Apple is (as unlike Apple they pay no dividend and have almost entirely avoided taking on debt).
There aren't very many large companies they can buy with that money, due to perpetually increasing anti-trust concerns. I suppose they could maul ~$25 billion buying Snap and probably get away with it due to Facebook (but comeon).
So what to do? Burn $1.1 billion on self-driving tech. Will it pan out? Doesn't really matter. Their search monopoly isn't going anywhere near-term (probably) and they'll have $200 billion in net cash in another 4 or 5 years. They could vaporize $11.1 billion on self-driving tech in the next couple of years and it would not matter, either to shareholders (oh, some would pretend to be upset) or to their operations.
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#10I think by most accounts - 1) Google / Waymo is by far the furthest ahead in self-driving tech. 2) Self-driving is possible in at least certain circumstances in the next decade or two (already is to an extent today). 3) Transportation / automobiles is an absolutely massive industry. Even companies like Dana, Inc (maker of axles) have $4bil valuations. It's easy to see how a self-driving tech maker would be worth far…
How do you come to that first conclusion?
It seems difficult to tell who is the “furthest ahead” because it’s a pretty complex race.
For starters, we can’t even say with certainty who all of the competitors are. Some are very quiet or at early stages but could be working on a breakthrough problem that turns out to be a pivot point.
Some are specializing. Who is going to scale up the best and most cost efficient solid state lidar? There’s a whole list of key problems being worked on.
Do you mean hardware or software? Just the algorithms are a huge piece. Just hardware is a huge pieces.
Beyond price and performance, it’s common that unforeseen factors end up being important in determining who becomes the most successful in selling traditional manufacturers components or whole systems. Surely we don’t realize all of them yet.
Also there is so much still being held close to the vest. These guys are keeping lots of secrets about how far along they are truly, roadblocks, etc.