Stefan Heck

Timeline

1. By 2014

   Cleantech at McKinsey

   He earns a B.S. with honors in symbolic systems at Stanford, where he launches the university's first Solar Car project as an undergraduate, and a Ph.D. in cognitive science at UC San Diego. At McKinsey, he becomes a senior partner and co-founds and leads the Cleantech and Sustainability practice. In April 2014, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publishes Resource Revolution, which he coauthors with Matthew Rogers and Paul B. Carroll.

2. 2015

   Founding Nauto

   After serving as a consulting professor at Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy, where he directs the Energy Transformation Collaborative, he co-founds Nauto in Palo Alto in 2015 with Frederick Soo and becomes its CEO. Nauto's systems merge artificial intelligence with dashcams to detect what is happening on the road ahead of a driver and within the vehicle.

3. 2016

   Carmakers invest in Nauto

   Playground Global leads a $12 million Series A round in Nauto in April 2016, joined by Draper Nexus. In October 2016, BMWi Ventures, Allianz Ventures and the Toyota Research Institute invest and license Nauto's technology, and Heck tells Reuters that the carmakers and insurer will use aggregate, anonymized data to develop their autonomous vehicle strategies.

4. July 2017

   A $159 million round

   In July 2017, Nauto raises $159 million in a Series B round led by SoftBank and Reid Hoffman at Greylock, with General Motors Ventures, Toyota AI Ventures and BMW iVentures also investing. Its windshield device points one camera at the driver and one at the road, and the company uses deep learning and computer vision to process the data. Heck says the funding lets Nauto gather billions more miles of real driving experience and data.

5. June 2024

   Joining SRI's board

   He joins the board of directors of SRI, an independent nonprofit research institute in Silicon Valley, effective June 2024. He brings experience in AI, autonomous driving and sustainability to the board.

6. October 2025

   Predictive Risk Fusion study

   In October 2025, a Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study finds that Nauto's Predictive Risk Fusion system can identify dangerous driving situations sooner when drivers are distracted. As CEO, Heck describes Nauto's AI as looking several seconds ahead to anticipate risks, such as a pedestrian stepping into the street, and says customers see between 50 and 80 percent fewer collisions.

7. July 2026

   Merger with Nexar

   In July 2026, Nauto and Nexar announce a definitive agreement to merge. Nexar CEO Zach Greenberger is to lead the combined company, and Heck, Nauto's founder and CEO, is to chair its board. The combined company cites more than 10 billion miles of driving history.

8. As of October 2026

   Chairman of Empiric Earth

   The merged company launches as Empiric Earth in September 2026, headquartered in New York City, with Zach Greenberger as CEO. Heck is its non-executive chairman.