X Development

X Development LLC, doing business asX (formerly Google X), is an American semi-secret research and development facility and organization founded by Google in January 2010. X has its headquarters about a mile and a half from Google's corporate headquarters, the Googleplex, in Mountain View, California.

According to an official blog post from the company, X's mission is to "invent and launch 'moonshot' technologies that [they] hope could make the world a radically better place." A moonshot is defined by X as the intersection of a big problem, a radical solution, and breakthrough technology. Work at X is overseen by entrepreneur scientist Astro Teller, as CEO and "Captain of Moonshots". The lab started with the development of Google's self-driving car.