Mobileye founder Amnon Shashua to step down as CEO after 27 years as company pivots to robotaxis and robotics

Mobileye Is Betting Its Identity on Robotaxis. Its Founder Built It for Something Else.

Mobileye's technology is in more than 250 million vehicles worldwide 1. For 27 years, the Jerusalem-based company made its living selling that technology to automakers. Now it wants to run its own fleet of driverless taxis and push into humanoid robotics.

On Thursday, alongside second-quarter earnings, Mobileye disclosed two things that belong in the same sentence even though every other outlet is splitting them apart. Founder and CEO Amnon Shashua will step down once a successor is found. And the company he built is pivoting from component supplier to fleet operator, with plans to launch a vertically integrated robotaxi service in at least one U.S. city in 2027 2.

The departure is the headline. The pivot is the story.

Shashua, 66, founded Mobileye in 1999 based on his academic research at Hebrew University and built it into a major supplier of technology for automotive safety and driver-assistance systems 3. Intel bought the company for $15.3 billion in 2017, then spun it back out as publicly traded in 2022 while remaining the largest shareholder 3. In January, Mobileye acquired Mentee Robotics, a humanoid robotics startup co-founded by Shashua, for $900 million, framing it as the next phase of the business focused on robotics and automotive AI 3.

Shashua will stay on Mobileye's board and has been offered the chairman role. The board is hiring an executive search firm to find his replacement 2.

The question his exit raises is not about who runs the company next. It is whether the strategy he set in motion can work without him, and whether Mobileye's automaker customers will keep buying from a supplier that now wants to compete with them.

The robotaxi plan is not a side bet. Mobileye said it intends to control more of the commercial stack: running its own ride service, partnering with existing platforms, or selling vehicles to other operators, with recurring revenue from passenger fares 2. It is repositioning its Moovit mobility platform to support the effort 2. Volkswagen's MOIA robotaxi subsidiary is already testing Mobileye's autonomous driving system on public roads in Hamburg with safety drivers 2.

The automakers buying Mobileye technology include Stellantis, which signed a new high-volume driver-assistance program with the company, and Chinese manufacturers Geely and Chery, whose exports increasingly use Mobileye systems 2. A supplier that starts running its own driverless ride service changes the dynamic with every customer on that list.

The earnings backdrop makes the pivot look less like ambition and more like pressure. Mobileye's Q2 revenue of $508 million beat analyst estimates near $481 million 2. The company raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to a range of $1.97 billion to $2.02 billion, up from its previous forecast 2. But the third quarter looks softer. Revenue is forecast to decline 5% to 6% year over year because of shipment volume adjustments 2. Shares fell about 17% to $7.28 at publication time 2, the steepest single-day drop since August 2024 1.

The margin story reveals the squeeze. Lower average selling prices for Mobileye's EyeQ chips, caused by higher-than-expected export volumes from Chinese automakers, compressed gross margin even as system shipments grew 2. The company is moving more units for less money per unit. That pricing pressure explains the strategic logic of the robotaxi pivot. Recurring fare revenue from operating a fleet is a fundamentally different business than selling chips at declining prices per unit.

The Mentee Robotics acquisition adds a third front. The deal came weeks after Mobileye laid off about 200 employees, 5% of its workforce, with most cuts hitting its 3,000 staff in Israel 1. Mobileye has been shutting down units in response to shrinking demand for certain products 1.

Shashua said he wants to shift his focus to longer-term technology development, particularly humanoid robotics 1. He framed Mobileye's direction as entering "a new era of physical AI" spanning driver-assistance systems, hands-free driving, robotaxis, and humanoids 1.

"For nearly three decades, Mobileye has been my life's work," he said 1. The question is whether that work survives its own transformation: a chip company becoming a robotaxi operator, a humanoid robotics firm, and a rebranded mobility platform all at once, guided by a CEO no one has hired yet.