Zoox
CEO: Aicha Evans
Founded: 2014
HQ: Foster City, CA
Zoox is working on the full stack for Robo-taxis, providing mobility-as-a-service. Operating at the intersection of design, computer science, and electro-mechanical engineering, Zoox is a multidisciplinary team working to imagine and build an advanced mobility experience that will support the future needs of urban mobility for both people and the environment.
In December 2018, Zoox became the first company to gain approval for providing self-driving transport services to the public in California. In January 2019, Zoox appointed a new CEO, Aicha Evans, who was previously the Chief Strategy Officer at Intel and became the first African-American CEO of a $1B company. Zoox had raised a total of $1B in funding over 6 rounds and on June 26, 2020, Amazon and Zoox signed a “definitive merger agreement” under which Amazon will acquire Zoox for over $1.2 billion. Zoox’s ground-up technology, which includes developing zero-emission vehicles built specifically for autonomous use, could be used to augment Amazon’s logistics operations.