Aicha Evans is making history in the tech industry as a Black woman CEO of a self-driving car start-up called Zoox that has recently been acquired by Amazon for $1.2 billion. As Zoox remains a standalone business, she and Jesse Levinson, the company’s co-founder and CTO, will continue their subsequent roles in the company.
“This acquisition solidifies Zoox’s impact on the autonomous driving industry,” Evans said in an Amazon blog post. “We have made great strides with our purpose-built approach to safe, autonomous mobility, and our exceptionally talented team working every day to realize that vision. We now have an even greater opportunity to realize a fully autonomous future.”
Evans was appointed Zoox’s CEO last year. Prior to that, she spent 12 years at Intel where she served as a general manager in the communication and devices group and the chief strategy officer. She brought to the company the experience of running a 7,000-person engineering team, and leading it toward commercialization.
Based in Foster City, California, Zoox was founded in 2014 and is now taking a further step in accelerating its path to “delivering safe, clean, and enjoyable transportation to the world” with Amazon’s support, said Levinson.
For more information about Zoox, visit www.zoox.com
