Self-driving startup Zoox settles Tesla lawsuit, lays off 100 workers

Enlarge / A Zoox self-driving car prototype in 2019. Zoox is using modified conventional vehicles like this one to test its self-driving software. But Zoox is planning to design its own vehicle for its eventual taxi service. (credit: Andrei Stanescu / Getty)

The self-driving startup Zoox has settled claims that four Tesla employees stole trade secrets on the way out the door to new jobs at Zoox.

Zoox has ambitious plans to build a vertically integrated taxi service, with Zoox engineers designing a vehicle, self-driving software, and a ride-hailing network. Zoox has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the last five years; a 2018 fundraising round valued the company at more than $3 billion. However, the company has struggled in the last couple of years. Zoox's founding CEO was pushed out in 2018, which is never a good sign for a startup that hasn't launched a product. Zoox laid off about 100 workers-10 percent of its workforce-earlier this week.

Tesla sued Zoox over trade secret theft in March of last year, alleging that between November 2018 and March 2019, four employees each made personal copies of confidential documents before leaving their Tesla jobs.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments