Welcome Drew Gray, Voyage’s New CTO

Leading Voyage to truly driverless transportation

Udacity’s Self-Driving Car Nanodegree stands out as the most comprehensive autonomous vehicle curriculum available today, with tens of thousands of successful students. As Udacity’s Head of Curriculum, I was extremely lucky to have the opportunity to collaborate with pioneers in the field — from Sebastian Thrun to senior leaders at Mercedes-Benz, NVIDIA, Uber ATG, and more.

One collaboration in-particular really stood out: Drew Gray, Director of Engineering at Otto and team member at Tesla, Cruise, and Uber ATG. The Udacity team was so excited when Drew agreed to teach some of the deep learning content for the class, and we got to work immediately. Drew and Eric (then at Udacity, now a Voyage co-founder) began by covering a technique called Behavioral Cloning, later collaborating on modules for model predictive controllers and object detection. The rest is history, with Drew’s contributions adding incredible value to the Self-Driving Car Nanodegree.

That collaboration has today, two years later, led to Drew, Eric and myself working together in a big way: Drew has joined Voyage as our CTO! This is a really exciting step for Voyage as we march toward truly driverless transportation.

The autonomous vehicle industry is still so young, it’s an incredibly rare to work side-by-side with someone who has held senior leadership positions at many of the foundational companies in the field. Drew has done just that, contributing to major engineering initiatives at places like Tesla, Cruise, Otto, and Uber ATG. I am thrilled to partner with Drew to deliver on truly driverless transportation in meaningful communities!


Drew (right) teaching some core deep learning concepts in the Udacity Self-Driving Car Nanodegree

A Teacher

Looking back at some of our earliest emails from the Udacity collaboration in 2016, it’s easy to see why we wanted Drew to work here at Voyage. He embodies the mentality of a teacher, something absolutely crucial in a CTO. Not only did Drew lead by doing, he also made sure everyone learned something along the way.

Drew, within hours of starting our Udacity collaboration!

One of the reasons I love working in autonomous vehicles is the opportunity to work with some of the smartest engineers and technical thought leaders on the planet. It was a ton of fun working with Drew back in 2016, and I can’t wait to continue learning from Drew in his new role as CTO.


Drew joins our world-class team of Voyagers at just the right time. I recently announced to the company that it’s “game-time” — we have a unique window of opportunity that doesn’t come around every day (or even every century). Voyage is going to be one of the very first companies to provide totally driverless transportation to an entire (retirement) city, and it’s critical we have experienced and entrepreneurial leaders like Drew to make it happen sooner than many thought possible.

To achieve that mission, it’s equally critical that we attract the best and brightest engineers to our team, and we’re now ramping up hiring at Voyage substantially. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our Careers page!

Photography by Monica Semergiu