The former director of Uber Technologies' autonomous technology unit, Anthony Levandowski, filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday, moments after a trial court declared that he must pay Google $179 million to put closure on a legal fight over his exit from the Alphabet Inc division.
Levandowski's knowledge of self-driving vehicles set the stage for a multimillion-dollar bidding dispute for his ingenuity, but he got caught in the crossfire between Google and Uber in their battle to be the legal owners of the technology.
An arbitration committee decided in December this year that Levandowski and Lior Ron had been involved in unfair competition and violated their agreement with Google when they resigned from the company to begin a competing rival self-driving vehicle firm that specializes on trucking, called the Otto, which Uber bought in 2017.
Uber, which later procured the startup co-established by Levandowski, indemnifies employees under its job deals. But Uber has disclosed in financial reports that it anticipates to challenge indemnifying the ruling against its former worker Levandowski, who is fighting a government indictment on accusations of stealing sensitive information from Google.
The determination now leaves Levandowski accountable to settle a $120 million bonus Google once paid him, and when attorney's fees were added, the amount grew enough that the legal counsel described it as "pretty staggering."
Adding to the burden, Levandowski faces criminal charges for allegedly stealing Google's trade secrets. Levandowski has denied wrongdoing and kept top-caliber lawyers to save him from a conviction at a trial scheduled next year that could send him behind bars.
One of his legal counsels told a federal judge soon after he was charged that his net value had shrunk to $72 million after accounting for taxes and a divorce. He has $50 million to $100 million in estimated assets, according to some sources, compared with $100 million to $500 million in financial liabilities, his filing showed.
Ron settled last month with Google to the tune of $9.7 million. However, Levandowski, had fought the ruling. The San Francisco County Superior Court junked his petition on Thursday granting Google's petition to hold him to the arbitration deal under which he was liable.
Meanwhile, Google's former self-driving vehicle partner is borrowing money on its own for the first time. Waymo, which is creating autonomous vehicles, will receive the $2.25 billion from a group of venture capitalists. Analysts have long speculated that Alphabet is planning to spin Waymo off as a public firm at some point.
