Alphabet’s Waymo CEO steps down as tech executives take over

Krafcik, the executive who steered the transformation of Google’s self-driving car project into a separate company worth billions of dollars, is stepping down after more than five years on the job. Krafcik announced his departure as CEO of Waymo, a company spun out from Google, in an April 2, 2021, blog post that cited his desire to enjoy life as the world emerges from the pandemic. — AP

John Krafcik stepped down as chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc’s Waymo self-driving vehicle division, making way for two tech industry veterans to jointly take over the business, the company said in a memo.

Krafcik, 59, will be replaced by Tekedra Mawakana, Waymo’s chief operating officer, and Dmitri Dolgov, chief technical officer, who will serve as co-CEOs. Mawakana was named COO in 2019, and held senior roles at AOL, Yahoo, and EBay Inc earlier in her career. Dolgov had been CTO since late 2016 and previously had engineering positions at Google and was a researcher at Toyota Research Institute, according to his LinkedIn profile.