Zoox replaces ousted Aussie

A veteran tech exec will replace Australian Tim Kentley-Klay at the helm of one of Silicon Valley’s most promising start-ups.

Tim Kentley Klax - Zoox co founder. Picture: Zoox

Autonomous vehicle start-up Zoox has named veteran Intel executive Aicha Evans its new CEO, replacing ousted Australian founder Tim Kentley-Klay who was removed from the post last August.

Ms Evans is chief strategy officer at Intel where she spent the past 12 years in various roles, including as head of the communication and device group overseeing the company’s efforts to sell chips for mobile phones.

In 2017, Ms Evans became responsible for the chip company’s long-term strategy, including a push into autonomous vehicles, after she nearly left amid other management changes.

She begins at Zoox on February 26. Her hiring makes Ms Evans, born in Senegal and raised in Paris, one of the most high-profile black women running a Silicon Valley tech company.

She succeeds Tim Kentley-Klay, the co-founder who was removed as CEO by Zoox’s board last August after the company had completed a $US500 million round that valued the company at $US3.2 billion.

On the Zoox board is Atlassian co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes, who told The Australian in September that removing Mr Kentley-Klay was a tough call.

“Tim did an amazing job for four years,” he said. “He’s done a great job, and worked thoroughly to get the company to where it is. The board made a decision to go a different way with a CEO. Obviously I’m the newest board member there. And those board level decisions are always hard.”

Mr Cannon-Brookes put in $US100m of his own money into a fundraising round through his Grok Ventures vehicle, adding to a string of start-ups he has investments in.

At the time of his ouster, Mr Kentley-Klay said in a statement that the board abruptly fired him and “chose a path of fear, optimising for a little money in hand at the expense of profound progress for the universe.”

Mr Kentley-Klay, an Australian designer, co-founded the company in 2014 with Jesse Levinson, who had made a name for himself in self-driving car development at Stanford University.

Zoox, with about 700 employees, is betting it can develop both the self-driving software and an entirely new electric vehicle for a robot taxi service. Zoox’s vision is to create a vehicle with an interior that looks like a lounge, for travelling within an urban area. The vehicle would be summoned by a smartphone.

Ms Evans, an engineer, said she was attracted by Zoox’s focus on urban services and its approach to building a vehicle rather than retrofitting cars made for drivers into driverless vehicles. “It’s about executing and scaling,” she said in an interview about the role ahead. “If we weren’t building it from the ground up, I wouldn’t be interested.”

The Foster City, California, company is testing its technology and planning to deploy its mobility service in 2020 but hasn’t yet named where that might occur.

Intel is searching for a CEO of its own after Brian Krzanich resigned last summer for violating company policy by having a relationship with a co-worker. His departure followed other high-level executive departures at the chip giant. Under Mr Krzanich, Intel has made a push into autonomous vehicle technology following its 2017 $US15.3 billion acquisition of Mobileye NV, a leader in sensors for assisted-driving features.

An Intel spokeswoman said it thanks Ms Evans for her leadership and contributions to the company. “We wish her well in her new endeavours and look forward to continuing to partner with her and Zoox, which is an Intel customer.”

With The Wall Street Journal.