 After the broad press coverage of the Pribot, Levandowski and Thrun were greenlit to launch Google's self-driving car program in January 2009.In 2011, Google quietly acquired Levandowski’s technology - the nucleus of Google's self-driving car project, via his two companies, 510 Systems, co-founded alongside Pierre-Yves Droz and Andrew Schultz, and Anthony’s Robots for an estimated $20 million.Project Chauffeur ran for almost two years undetected, road testing with seven vehicles before the "New York Times" revealed their existence on October 9, 2010.