Summary
Ajay Gummalla is a co-founder and Vice President of Engineering at Bedrock Robotics, where he leads autonomy and platform engineering for the company’s autonomous construction equipment. He spent 13 years at Alphabet, including seven years as a Director of Systems and Programs at Waymo, where he led the development of sensing hardware for the company’s autonomous vehicles and trucks.
Career
Gummalla’s career at Alphabet spanned both Google and Waymo. He spent seven years as a Director of Systems and Programs at Waymo, where he was responsible for leading the development of the company’s sensing hardware — the lidar, radar, camera, and other sensor systems that enable Waymo’s autonomous vehicles to perceive and navigate their environment. Former Waymo CEO John Krafcik, in a LinkedIn post about Bedrock Robotics, credited Gummalla with being “behind Waymo’s robust, cutting-edge sensing hardware” (LinkedIn post by John Krafcik).
In addition to his Waymo role, Gummalla held a position as a hardware technical lead at Google for 13 years, working on projects including Google Wifi, Chromebooks, and Chromecast. In a 2024 LinkedIn post announcing his departure from Alphabet, he wrote: “I recently moved on from Waymo after 13 years at Alphabet. It’s been an honor to have had the chance to learn and work with such an incredibly talented group of people… I’m immensely proud of our collaborative efforts on various projects, including Autonomous Cars and Trucks, Google Wifi, Chromebooks, and Chromecast. Every time I see a Waymo, I still feel that same excitement” (LinkedIn).
Gummalla left Waymo in 2024 to co-found Bedrock Robotics alongside Boris Sofman, Kevin Peterson, and Tom Eliaz. At Bedrock, he serves as Vice President of Engineering, leading hardware and autonomy platform engineering. In an Eclipse investor blog post profiling the founding team, Gummalla was quoted on the team’s strategy of tackling the hardest technical problems first: “Over the course of our careers, one of the key lessons we learned is to tackle the hardest problem first, because once you tackle that hard problem, then most of the other things will just fall into place. And excavators are really hard” (Eclipse).
Source Notes
This profile draws on Ajay Gummalla’s LinkedIn post announcing his departure from Waymo, Equipment World’s coverage of Bedrock’s launch, a LinkedIn post by former Waymo CEO John Krafcik praising the Bedrock founding team, Eclipse’s investor blog post on Bedrock, and Bedrock Robotics’ company website. Specific details about his academic background and early career before joining Google have not been publicly disclosed and are not included here.