Washington — General Motors Co.’s Silicon Valley software chief is out.
The company said Friday that Dave Richardson, who joined the automaker in September 2023 and assumed the role of senior vice president of software and services engineering in June of last year, will leave the company.
Richardson’s exit comes a week after he appeared on stage with CEO Mary Barra at an event in midtown Manhattan focused on the Detroit-based car and truck-maker’s forays into eyes-off autonomous driving and “conversational” artificial intelligence in vehicles.
The company said Richardson’s sudden exit came after some organizational restructuring and does not reflect a change in its overall technology strategy moving forward.
“We’re changing the structure of the Software and Services Engineering team to accelerate how we develop and deliver technology experiences to our customers and the company,” the company said in a statement.
It continued: “As part of this change, we are bringing together vehicle software engineering and Global Product under one organization, led by Sterling Anderson. David Richardson has elected to step down from his role at GM, and we thank him for his contributions.”
Anderson was brought on in June to fill the newly created position of chief product officer. He previously led Tesla’s Model X and Autopilot programs and co-founded self-driving commercial vehicle company Aurora.
Both Anderson and Richardson worked out of GM’s Mountain View Technical Center in California. The company opened the center in May 2024 amid a push to attract new talent and make its vehicles more modern and tech-forward, breaking out of its century-old, legacy automaker image.
Before GM, Richardson worked at Apple for 12 years as an engineering leader responsible for driving innovation and efficiency in infrastructure for services including iCloud, FaceTime and Siri.
@GrantSchwab
Staff Writer Summer Ballentine contributed.
