00:00founder and CEO Amnon Shashra joins us now for an exclusive interview. Welcome back to the show.
00:07I think the easiest place to start is why. Why you're stepping down, why you think now is the
00:12right time to hand the reins over to someone else. Good morning, Ed. I think there's never a good
00:19time, but at the same time, this is the best time because, you know, Mobileye built a great
00:25foundation, technological foundation going forward. And we are at an inflection point
00:30in which, you know, there's no open scientific problem in the stacks, in the software stacks
00:36that we are developing. Everything is running either offline or online and is ready both for
00:42Robotaxi and for, you know, everything that we are developing. On the other hand, there is huge
00:48expansion, operational expansion, go-to-market expansion. For example, in the Robotaxi, we want
00:53to go B2C, to explore B2C, not only B2B. Humanoids, we want to, it's a new thing for us, B2C
01:01as well.
01:02And at the same time, AI is moving very, very fast, as you just mentioned in your previous
01:08articles. And as a scientist, this is really my strongest point in my contribution to Mobileye.
01:16So I think it's the best time to bring a new CEO that will take care of the growth
01:20and me focus on the long horizon thinking.
01:26You'll stay in post until success is found. How active will you be in the process, Amnon,
01:32of finding your replacement?
01:34Well, the board has a search committee. I'll, of course, be very contributing to it and also
01:42our management team. We want to cast a very wide net. We want to bring the best CEO.
01:51We are looking, I'm looking many years into the future. And at this point in time, if you find an
01:59excellent CEO, the growth potential of Mobileye is huge. It's really huge.
02:04The stock is down significantly, right? 15% biggest drop since August of 2024. And the sell side
02:11acknowledges that your decision to drop, to step down, is overshadowing a pretty strong set of
02:21results. Has that surprised you, the reaction to this?
02:27Well, actually, I thought the stock would go up, but I think that the markets, they don't like
02:33uncertainty. And, you know, once it will be internalized that time, I'm here to stay. I'm
02:39not going anywhere. Just, you know, releasing myself from the day-to-day management and focusing
02:45on what really matters, which is the future, technology of the future, science of the future.
02:50You know, Mobileye is one of the few, really very few companies in the physical AI space that does
02:57both autonomous cars and humanoid robotics. This is really huge. And there are lots of
03:04technological ideas going forward. And this is what I want to focus on.
03:09So this is also a fundamental question for the company, right? You know, whoever comes in as the
03:15next leader of Mobileye, what is your expectation that they just completely shift the company
03:20focus to RoboTaxi as a domain as opposed to being a supplier of SOC for ADAS, just going deeper
03:28into that segment? No. Look, ADAS is contributing today about $2 billion of revenue per year,
03:37$400 million of profit. There is at least a single-digit growth in year-on-year on ADAS.
03:48It is really a cash cow. Nobody wants to remove the focus from ADAS. The challenge is to increase,
03:56not instead, but increase focus on RoboTaxi and Humanoid. Well, first RoboTaxi. This is really
04:03around the corner. We have, you know, cooperation with Volkswagen, with Moya, our first city,
04:12Orlando, and Lake Nona. Just last week, there was a very big demonstration of end-to-end, including
04:20teleoperation. The KPIs are on track. Commercialization, commercial deployment by the end of the year.
04:28Everything looks really good. And now that, you know, the challenge is operational, go-to-market,
04:38building the operations. And it has, it's really orthogonal to ADAS.
04:44So you, I suppose you envisage the next leader being more operational rather than from a science
04:51and sort of entrepreneur background like you have, right? I think just to end this, Amnon,
04:57to be clear, this was your idea. This was you wanting to move to something new as opposed to
05:03the board or anyone else saying, you know what, we should make a change.
05:07Well, it's my idea. And also the board has offered me the chairman position. So it shows confidence.
05:14It shows confidence in me. It shows confidence in my future contribution. And it's my idea because
05:21I think it is the right time not to wait too long because it's an inflection point. And now is
05:27really
05:28the right time to bring someone that can help with the growth. Just very quick, we have 15 seconds
05:34for which I apologize, but do you have a target timeline date?
05:39No, no, I'm here to stay. Well, it'll take as much time it'll take to find a successor CEO. And
05:45as I said, we're casting a wide net to find the best CEO possible.
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