Uber is losing the executive who runs engineering for its robotaxi partnerships, with Vice President of Engineering and Science Danny Guo due to step down on November 16, Bloomberg reported, citing an email sent to employees.
Guo, who reports to Chief Technology Officer Praveen Neppalli Naga, is taking a role outside the transportation industry, an Uber spokesperson told Bloomberg. Many of the leaders in his teams will now report directly to Neppalli Naga, the spokesperson said.
He leaves weeks before Uber plans to begin fully driverless testing of the robotaxi it is launching with Lucid and Nuro, and days after the company said its President would also depart. He goes on the same day as Sarfraz Maredia, Uber’s global head of autonomous mobility and delivery.
Nearly 12 Years at Uber
Guo joined Uber in February 2015 from Facebook, where he worked on News Feed ranking and infrastructure, according to his LinkedIn profile. He had earlier been an engineer at Microsoft and Cisco, and studied at the University of California, Riverside.
The profile describes him as leading engineering, applied science and data science groups across Uber’s mobility and delivery businesses. It lists five areas: autonomous, covering “AV Labs and commercialization,” the experimentation platform, maps, marketplace and membership.
His teams are spread across Amsterdam, Bangalore, New York, Seattle, San Francisco and Toronto, the profile says, and their work runs from sensor hardware and onboard vehicle software to computer vision and machine learning.
Earlier in his time at Uber, Guo helped set up the marketplace group that handles real-time matching of riders and drivers, dynamic pricing and incentives, according to the profile.
The Face of AV Labs
Guo was the public voice of AV Labs, the unit Uber launched in January to collect real-world driving data for the companies that supply robotaxis to its network.
“We’re launching AV Labs, a new team at Uber focused on accelerating the autonomy ecosystem,” he wrote in the company’s announcement. “Every hour, millions of real Uber trips take place across cities, suburbs, airports, restaurants and complex environments.”
Uber does not build its own self-driving system, having sold that division to Aurora in 2020. It works with more than 20 autonomous vehicle partners, and AV Labs is meant to give them data from rare driving situations that are hard to capture with small test fleets.
“Because if we don’t do this, we really don’t believe anybody else can,” Guo told TechCrunch in January. “So as someone who can potentially unlock the whole industry and accelerate the whole ecosystem, we believe we have to take on this responsibility right now.” He said the unit had started with a single Hyundai Ioniq 5 fitted with sensors, and Naga said it would grow to a few hundred people within a year.
He described a planned “shadow mode,” in which a partner’s driving software would run in Uber’s data-collection cars so that differences from the human driver’s decisions could be flagged. “We have 600 cities that we can pick and choose” from, he said.
The unit has grown since. Uber said in June that it planned to put 500 data-collection vehicles on the road globally this year, each an Ioniq 5 fitted with 14 cameras, eight LiDAR units and nine radars. It said the fleet could gather 2 million miles of data a month.
Driverless Launch Ahead
The departure comes at a busy moment for the programs Guo’s teams support.
Uber said on November 4 that its robotaxi service with Lucid and Nuro in the San Francisco Bay Area is now scheduled for the first quarter of 2027, after earlier saying it would begin this year. Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi said fully driverless testing would start this quarter and that the service “will operate fully driverless from day one.”
Lucid said the same day that it began building pre-production robotaxis in October, and its Chief Executive Officer, Silvio Napoli, repeated the first-quarter date on an earnings call on Monday. Nuro has briefed police departments in three Bay Area cities ahead of the launch.
“Our focus on autonomous is now on commercial execution, with approximately 700 fully driverless vehicles expected on Uber by year-end and over 2,000 in 2027,” Khosrowshahi said in the third-quarter results statement. Uber plans to commit more than $10 billion to robotaxi partnerships over the coming years, according to Bloomberg.
One long-standing partner is meanwhile loosening its ties. Waymo plans to launch its own app in Austin and Atlanta, where its cars are available only through Uber, and its co-Chief Executive Officer said booking through Uber had been “a little bit of a crapshoot.”
Exits in the Autonomous Unit
Guo’s departure is the latest of several from Uber’s autonomous business.
Maredia, who has been with Uber for more than 12 years, is leaving on November 16 for an executive role outside the transportation industry, Bloomberg reported in October. His responsibilities are being divided between Samarth Kejriwal, a Senior Director who oversees driverless vehicle operations, and Aaron Emrich, who heads autonomous delivery.
“There’s never been more momentum behind our AV efforts than there is today,” Maredia wrote in a farewell memo cited in that report.
Guy Peterson, who led business development for autonomous partnerships, joined Also, the micromobility company spun out of Rivian, as Chief Business Officer in October. Lando Juarez, who led legal work for the unit, left for Bedrock Robotics in June, according to the same report.
A Year of Senior Exits
The changes reach beyond autonomy. Chief Financial Officer Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah stepped down on February 16 and was succeeded by Balaji Krishnamurthy, who had been Vice President of Strategic Finance. Chief People Officer Nikki Krishnamurthy stepped down on May 11.
Jill Hazelbaker took on the people function that day in a new role as President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer. Uber said on November 4 that she will step down on November 30 “for an external opportunity.” OpenAI had announced a day earlier that she would join it as Chief Corporate Affairs Officer.
Gus Fuldner, the Senior Vice President for safety and core services, left in January. Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, who ran the delivery business, left in 2025 after almost 13 years.
Uber announced plans in September to cut 10% of its workforce, about 3,300 jobs, Bloomberg reported.
Khosrowshahi tied the May reshuffle to the changes the company faces. “As we enter a period of rapid change, from advances in AI to the growth of autonomous vehicles, how we show up and deliver matters more than ever,” he said in that filing.
Uber shares closed up 3.8% at $71.17 on Monday. They are down 12.9% this year.
