Aicha Evans

Aicha Evans was born in Dakar, Senegal, educated in Paris, and earned an electrical engineering degree at George Washington University. She spent over a decade at Intel, rising to chief strategy officer, before becoming CEO of the self-driving startup Zoox in February 2019 — making her one of the few Black women to lead a major AI company. Amazon acquired Zoox in 2020 for a reported $1.2 billion-plus and kept her in charge.

A robotaxi built from scratch

Unlike rivals that retrofit ordinary cars, Zoox spent years building a purpose-designed robotaxi — a symmetrical, bidirectional pod with no steering wheel and carriage-style seating. Evans absorbed years of skepticism about the slower approach; the payoff came on September 10, 2025, when Zoox opened a fully driverless public ride-hailing service on and around the Las Vegas Strip, bookable through its own app, with San Francisco, Austin and Miami on the expansion map.

Evans frames the company as proof that Amazon’s patience with long-horizon bets is underrated, telling Fast Company in 2025 that the robotaxi race had reached “the proof-point stage.” Her case for autonomy is grounded in safety and access — machine drivers that do not get tired, drunk or distracted.

The robotaxi industry still faces regulatory investigations and public unease after incidents involving competitors, and Zoox’s footprint remains small next to Waymo’s. Evans’s answer has been methodical scaling: purpose-built hardware, one city proven at a time.