Zoox (company)

Zoox is an American autonomous vehicle company currently headquartered in Foster City, California, United States with multiple offices of operations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. The company was founded in 2014, and then acquired by Amazon in 2020.
Robo-taxi.
Zoox is creating an entirely new autonomous vehicle targeted at the robo-taxi market. The company's approach is centered around the fact that a retrofitted vehicle is not optimized for autonomy. Zoox has applied the latest techniques in automotive, robotics and renewable energy to build a symmetrical, bi-directional battery-electric vehicle that solves for the unique challenges of autonomous mobility.
The company had previously retrofitted Toyota Highlanders with their self-driving system in final preparation for their commercial vehicle reveal in December 2020. The present-day test driving is taking place in both San Francisco's Financial District and North Beach districts, as well as Las Vegas.
History.
Zoox was founded in 2014 by Australian artist-designer Tim Kentley-Klay, and Jesse Levinson, son of Apple Inc. chairman Arthur D. Levinson, who was developing self-driving technology at Stanford University.
The company's name Zoox comes from the creature Zooxanthellae due to the creature's dependence on renewable energy like Zoox's production vehicle and its symbiotic relationship with coral reefs relating to the company's goal to have a symbiotic relationship with people.
In December 2018, Zoox became the first company to gain approval for providing self-driving transport services to the public in California.
By July 2018, according to Bloomberg, Zoox had raised $800 million in venture capital, at a valuation of $3.2 billion. Draper Fisher Jurvetson is an investor in the company.
In January 2019, Zoox appointed a new CEO, Aicha Evans, who was previously the Chief Strategy Officer at Intel.
On March 20, 2019, Tesla, Inc. filed a lawsuit against Zoox and several now-former Tesla employees (who left Tesla for employment at Zoox) alleging theft of Tesla's proprietary information and trade secrets related to warehousing, shipping, and logistics in late 2018 and early 2019. The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed sum in April 2020 where Zoox "acknowledged that certain of its new hires from Tesla were in possession of Tesla documents pertaining to shipping, receiving, and warehouse procedures when they joined Zoox’s logistics team.”
On June 26, 2020, Amazon and Zoox signed a "definitive merger agreement" under which Amazon will acquire Zoox for over $1.2 billion.
In September 2020, Zoox became the fourth company in the State of California to receive permit to test driverless automobiles on public roads.
On December 14, 2020, Zoox became the world’s first company to showcase a fully autonomous, all-electric, purpose-built vehicle that is capable of driving up to 75 mph.