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

Israel Defense Forces The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; he, צְבָא הַהֲגָנָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the Israel, State of Israel. It consists of three servic ...

from 1997 to 2004, before attending

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

to pursue a MBA. 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 fro ...

, a self-driving truck company, with

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

, 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 panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

and then the Product Lead for

Motorola Mobility Motorola Mobility LLC, marketed as Motorola, is an American consumer electronics manufacturer primarily producing smartphones and other mobile devices running Android OS, Android. It is a subsidiary of the Chinese multinational technology company ...

, which was acquired by

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

in 2011.

Early life and career

In 1994 Ron entered The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in

Haifa, Israel Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') 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 metropol ...

, where he earned a bachelor's degree in

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

. 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 (also known as Stanford GSB) is the graduate business school of Stanford University, a private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective business schoo ...

where he earned his MBA. Then in 2007 he joined

as the Product Lead for

. According to

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

, “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 as a semitruck, (or semi, eighteen-wheeler, big rig, tractor-trailer or, by wiktionary:synecdoche, synecdoche, a semitrailer) is the combination of a tractor unit and one or more semi-trailers to carry fr ...

trucks. Quoted in 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. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery (Uber Eats and Postmates), package ...

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 standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...

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