Alex Rodrigues and Brandon Moak, former MME students, are amongst the 20-something founders of an autonomous trucking company now valued at approximately US $5-billion.
It was 2015. Rodrigues and Moak, his undergraduate classmate in the mechatronics engineering program, had built the cart – the first autonomous vehicle in Canada – in his parents’ garage.
Alex Rodrigues, right, drives Feridun Hamdullahpur around the Ring Road in a self-driving golf cart in 2015.
Six years after this photo was taken, Rodrigues and Moak built Embark Technology Inc. A company with over 200 employees with plans of building autonomous haulers that transports goods faster, cheaper and safer whilst minimizing enviomental impact.
Embark took a huge step in that direction when they announced that they are merging with Northern Genesis 2, a special purpose acquisition company headed by Waterloo Engineering alumnus Ian Robertson, to become a public company. It will begin trading on the Nasdaq exchange with an estimated $5-billion valuation.
Shares held by Rodrigues and Moak, who remain the chief executive and chief technology officers, respectively, make them both worth hundreds of millions of dollars. See Waterloo News for full story