Motional, the autonomous vehicle startup backed by Hyundai, is shaking up its leadership ranks. Karl Iagnemma, an early pioneer in the autonomous vehicle industry whose startup Nutonomy lies at the foundation of Motional, is stepping down as president and CEO.
Iagnemma will move over to a senior strategy advisor role, while CTO Laura Major will become interim CEO, according to a company announcement that was released Wednesday evening. Major will also maintain her CTO role.
Motional didn’t provide a reason for the change, although one source familiar told TechCrunch the decision was amicable. In a statement, Iagnemma said he was honored to serve as CEO and is “immensely proud of the progress” the team has made toward developing and deploying safe autonomous vehicles.
Iagnemma has been a central figure not just at Motional, but within the autonomous vehicle industry. Iagnemma and Emilio Frazzoli, who became well known in academic circles for their robotics and AV research, were part of the MIT team that participated in DARPA’s autonomous vehicle research and development program called the Urban Challenge in 2007. The pair would go on to found AV startup Nutonomy (stylized as nuTonomy) in 2013.
Nutonomy never received the same amount of media attention as other bigger and better funded AV players like the Google self-driving project, now known as Waymo. However, it got the attention of investors and the automotive and tech industry when it became the first to deploy a public trial of a self-driving car service in Singapore in August 2016. A little more than a year later, Nutonomy was acquired by Delphi — now known as Aptiv — for $450 million.
When Hyundai and Aptiv formed a $4 billion joint venture in 2019 called Motional to commercialize autonomous vehicles, Iagnemma took the top leadership role.
Motional has made progress on its push to launch a commercial robotaxi. However, it has also faced a challenging funding environment that delayed its plans. Earlier this year, automotive supplier Aptiv — the other half of the joint venture — said it would no longer allocate capital toward the endeavor.
Hyundai ultimately stepped forward and in May agreed to invest another $1 billion into Motional. Hyundai made a $475 million direct investment in Motional and spent another $448 million to buy 11% of Aptiv’s common equity interest. The deal gave Hyundai a majority stake, while providing the self-driving startup with the necessary capital to keep operating.
But it came with a cost. Motional laid off about 550 people, paused commercial operations, and delayed plans to launch a robotaxi service with its next-gen Hyundai Ioniq 5 robotaxis until 2026 as part of a restructuring. The commercial operations included taxi rides in autonomous Hyundai Ioniq 5 vehicles in Las Vegas via the Uber and Lyft network.
The company also ended deliveries using its autonomous vehicles for Uber Eats customers in Santa Monica. A human safety operator was behind the wheel in all of its commercial operations.
The restructuring was designed to make progress on the core technology and the business model while preserving capital, sources familiar with the changes said at the time.