Uber's Otto due diligence report has been made public as part of Uber v. Waymo lawsuit
Alphabet had been fighting to get ahold of this document for months over the course of its litigation against Uber. — A report that Alphabet wants to use in its lawsuit against Uber was made public today.
Context & Ripple Effects
This document sits at the center of the case Waymo opened when it sued Otto and Uber for trade-secret theft over LiDAR designs in February 2017. Since then the fight has been as much about process as substance: a judge forced Uber to hand over an unredacted term sheet with Otto in May, and in September the appeals court refused to send the case to private arbitration, ordering Uber to produce the due diligence report itself.
Making the report public matters because it was Alphabet's target for months — the document Uber's own lawyers compiled when buying Otto, and therefore a record of what Uber knew about founder Anthony Levandowski before hiring him. A June filing already showed Kalanick knew Levandowski had taken Alphabet files in March 2016; the report now puts Uber's internal assessment of that risk into the open record ahead of trial.
First-order effects
- Waymo's trial team gains direct access to the acquisition-era document Alphabet spent months litigating to obtain, strengthening its argument that Uber knew what it was buying.
- Uber's Otto acquisition diligence — normally sealed deal paperwork — becomes part of the public court file, exposing how the company evaluated Levandowski and his files at the time of purchase.
Second-order effects
- Uber's defense strategy shifts further toward arguing Alphabet's grievance is really about losing the Otto acquisition and the Levandowski hire rather than stolen secrets, since the paper trail keeps cutting against the knowledge narrative.
- Other acquirers of self-driving startups face repriced diligence risk: if a buyer's internal valuation documents can be compelled into a rival's lawsuit, the cost of acqui-hiring talent with contested IP histories rises.
Third-order effects
- If this pattern holds, M&A diligence files become standing litigation weapons in tech — the acquiring company's own assessment of a founder's conduct doubles as evidence against it, changing how deals in contested technology areas are documented.
- Autonomous-vehicle competition is being settled partly in court rather than only in the lab, with trade-secret suits like Waymo's shaping who can field LiDAR and driving systems and on what terms.
The trend: Self-driving's land-grab era is giving way to a legal-accounting era, in which the deals that assembled AV teams are being re-examined in court and acquisition paperwork itself has become the battlefield.