Former Waymo Tech Lead Joins Team at Iron Ox as First Director of Robotics

Former Waymo and Google technical lead David Silver has joined the team at Iron Ox as its first-ever Director of Robotics, the company announced on Tuesday.

The California-based farming innovation company raised a $20M Series B back in September 2020. It’s looking to disrupt modern farming with a mission to solve food insecurity through its robotics-first approach to growing produce. In 2018, it opened up its first fully autonomous indoor farm.

As the first Director of Robotics at the farm tech company, he will be responsible for leading and scaling up the robotics team immediately, says CEO Brandon Alexander. He will report to SVP of Engineering Sarah Osentoski.

Silver most recently worked as the technical lead for self-driving cars at Waymo, the autonomous car division of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. He first joined Google in 2013 as a robotics researcher and tech lead for self-driving cars.

He has also held leadership roles at The National Robotics Engineering Center, where his work focused on self-driving cars.

"The challenge of having different robots work together is really engaging,” Silver said in a press release. “It's got everything: mobility, manipulation, computer vision, and a vast amount of machine learning potential. Bringing that all together to solve such an urgent, global problem as agriculture's effects on climate is deeply motivating. The team here is great, and I can't wait to get started with them."

Silver’s hire comes as the company prepares for a new era of hypergrowth. Last month, Iron Ox hired Tom Constantino as Chief Financial Officer, as well as new Head of Marketing Chris Matthews. It says hiring plant scientists, engineers, greenhouse operators and roboticists in Califonia and Texas.

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