Uber acquires the self-driving truck company Otto

Uber said it had bought Otto, a San Francisco startup building self-driving retrofit kits for freight trucks, in a deal reported at up to $680 million in Uber equity. Otto’s co-founder Anthony Levandowski took charge of Uber’s self-driving work.

Why it mattered The deal put a ride-hailing company into autonomous trucking, and Levandowski’s move from Google later sat at the center of Waymo’s trade-secrets suit against Uber.