They're not CEOs, but they're the most influential people in the self-driving field – Part 2

2. Andrej Karpathy, Tesla's senior director of artificial intelligence

Karpathy is a key person in the development of autopilot. As Tesla's Senior Director of Artificial Intelligence, Kaparthy is in charge of autopilot's neural network, which enables the system to learn how to make better decisions by studying the videos and images taken by Tesla vehicles.Although many people criticized Tesla for releasing autopilot as an unfinished system and refusing to develop a more powerful system to ensure drivers pay attention to road safety, autopilot has made a breakthrough progress in drivers’ assistance system. Its ability has been highly evaluated. Before joining Tesla in 2017, Karpathy was a Research Scientist at OpenAI.

3. Puneeth Meruva, Trucks Assistant

Trucks is one of the top Venture Capital companies in the autopilot industry. According to PitchBook’s data, it ties for the largest investment company with other three VC companies in the auto driving industry. They all have invested 18 companies separately. Reilly Brennan, General Partner of Trucks, said that Meruva is the company's "first filter" for the decision of investment target. The company inspects about 100 start-ups every month, and Meruva is usually the first person to meet with them. He probably pays attention to more autonomous driving companies than anyone else anywhere. Before joining Trucks, Meruva worked as a Software Engineer at Uber and BMW. (Source: Tencent News)