Why Anthony Levandowski returned to his off-road autonomous vehicle roots with AV startup Pronto

Five years ago, as robotaxis and self-driving truck startups were still raking in millions in venture capital, Anthony Levandowski turned to off-road autonomy.

Now, that decision — which brought the former Google engineer and serial entrepreneur back to the roots that helped launch his pioneering and controversial career — is starting to pay off. 

Pronto, the San Francisco-based startup Lewandowski co-founded with Ognen Stojanovski, has developed a self-driving system designed for haulage trucks and other off-road vehicles that are used at construction and mining sites. About a dozen companies are now using its so-called “autonomous haulage system” or AHS, according to Levandowksi, who noted that not all of those deployments are driverless.

A newly announced partnership illustrates Pronto’s traction in the niche market. Pronto exclusively shared with TechCrunch that it has extended a partnership with Heidelberg Materials North America, one of the largest build materials and cement producers in the world, following a pilot program last year at the company’s Bridgeport Quarry in Texas. Under the agreement, Pronto’s technology will be integrated into Komatsu haulage trucks, which will operate autonomously at the site. This time around, the trucks will also include Komatsu’s connected vehicle technology to improve data collection and analysis. 

The 30-person startup uses advanced sensors, cameras and artificial intelligence to operate haul trucks autonomously. Pronto also uses Pollen Mobile, a peer-to-peer open source mobile data network the startup launched in 2022 that allows it to exchange data anonymously and at high speeds without relying on legacy carriers. Pollen is used to support sites with little to no connectivity. 

Interest and investment in off-road autonomy has increased as startups and more established technology companies seek out the best and fastest path to commercialization. It’s what motivated Levandowski to change course in 2019.

“Obviously, autonomous vehicle technology is going to be transformational for all applications that have wheels, but I think that they’re going to come sooner in the applications where the technology and the market needs it and really lines up,” Levandowski said in a recent interview.

For Levandowski, off-road is the most compelling because it is used on private property. And while the complexities of the environment are more difficult from a driving perspective, the people working at the site can be properly trained to interact with autonomous vehicles. 

“The actors all know what’s happening, and they’re all accountable for their actions, so they can go through training and know how to behave around a car versus some of our pedestrians in San Francisco,” he said. “It’s an application where the tech is ready today, and the market needs that technology now. So it’s a great spot to start off with.”

Levandowski first formed Pronto in 2018 with a different aim. The startup was initially working on advanced driver assistance features built for Class 8 trucks and passenger vehicles. 

Pronto pivoted to off-road autonomy in 2019 because “it became clear we couldn’t do on-road autonomy on a timeframe that we want as a business.”

The move brought him back to where he started. 

Levandowski participated in the autonomous-driving Grand Challenge in 2005, an off-road AV competition sponsored by the DARPA. His experience — and the connections he made, including with Stanford professor and eventual Google X founder Sebastian Thrun — would shape his career. 

Levandowski had already co-founded a Berkeley, California startup called 510 Systems that was working on a mobile mapping system. The startup experimented with using cameras and a timing system to assist drivers in steering tractors and controlling bulldozers. Levandowski then joined Google in 2007 to work on its mapping technology, which would eventually evolve into the Street View system. 

Those Street View systems used the Topcon box, designed by 510 Systems, which combined lidar and camera sensors, GPS and wheel encoders and was mounted to a car. 

Levandowski would go on to become one of the founding members in 2009 of the Google self-driving project, which was internally called Project Chauffeur and evolved into Waymo. Google ended up buying 510 Systems, and its sister company, Anthony’s Robots, in 2011. 

Levandowski, who helped pioneer the technology at the heart of self-driving leader Waymo, would later become a central figure in a trade secrets lawsuit that pitted the Alphabet subsidiary against Uber. 

“I like off-road because that’s where you can build a product and you’re ready for today,” Levandowski said. “The market is obviously much, much smaller than on-road and and typically, investors will want to chase a large TAM (total addressable market).” 

Pronto has raised an undisclosed amount from investors, Levandowski said without naming his backers. He added the funding wasn’t through a traditional VC series round. 

“I don’t think it’s like the next frontier,” Levandowski said of off-road autonomy. “It’s almost like the skipped-over frontier that we really should have checked off along the way to on-road autonomy.”