Jan Becker is an OG of autonomous driving — if a car has ever tried to drive itself in the last three decades, chances are Jan has been somewhere in the mix. He's been building, testing, teaching, and debugging self-driving technology long before the world believed it was possible. From autonomous driving for vehicle testing in the nineties over prototyping level 2 ADAS in the early 2000s to wrenching on code for the Stanford Racing Team in the DARPA Urban Challenge to teaching the next generation of innovators at Stanford University (where he's lectured on autonomous driving since 2010), Jan has seen it all — and usually had the fix ready before anyone else knew it was broken.  

When he's not in the classroom or shaping the future of mobility, Jan is collecting hardware for his shelf. In 2016, Automotive News named him one of the “60 people driving the self-driving movement.” In 2024, he won MotorTrend's Software-Defined Vehicle Innovator of the Year and also snagged the prestigious Automotive News PACE Award.  

With a PhD in Control Engineering, as well as master's degrees in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Electrical Engineering, and research experience in the Stanford AI Lab, Jan combines academic rigor with real-world grit. And while his résumé includes leadership roles at Bosch, Faraday Future, and now as CEO & Co-Founder of Apex.AI, it's his decades of hands-on experience in autonomous driving that make him a true pioneer. Simply put: when it comes to self-driving cars, Jan isn't just riding shotgun on the future — he's been in the driver's seat since day one.