By Sharon Terlep and Suzanne Vranica
Sterling Anderson clashed with Elon Musk and left Tesla to launch a startup that has put self-driving trucks on the road. This summer he took a top job at General Motors.
Now, the robotics guru is seen by senior GM leaders as a dark-horse candidate to succeed Chief Executive Mary Barra, who has led the automaker for more than a decade and turns 64 this week.
Anderson, 42 years old, joined GM in June as its global product chief, overseeing the development of all gas-powered and electric vehicles. He has expanded his influence in recent months, taking over units that develop artificial intelligence and integrate software into GM vehicles.
His rise is shaking up a succession landscape complicated by years of tumult and turnover in GM's headquarters. Anderson's decision to leave Aurora Innovation, the self-driving trucking company he co-founded and that is now valued at $8 billion, to join the ranks of GM left some puzzled.
"Sterling saw GM as kind of a company that has lost its way a little bit and saw an opportunity to go and help," said Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson. "He thought he could go there and help point the right direction."
Barra has run GM since 2014 -- a tenure that is more than double the median S&P 500 CEO's term. She introduced EV models and steered the giant through the Trump administration's tariffs. Asked recently during an onstage interview about how long she plans to remain at GM, Barra said, "That's the board's decision, not mine."
A GM spokeswoman said there has been no discussion of Barra leaving. As for Anderson, she said, "Any discussion of a future role is premature and speculative."
Several other GM executives are also seen by investors as candidates for the top job. They include finance chief Paul Jacobson and Mark Reuss, a 40-year GM veteran and Barra's No. 2.
Other would-be CEO candidates have left the company in recent years. Among them: Dhivya Suryadevara, a high-profile finance chief in 2020, Dan Ammann, Barra's former No. 2 in 2021, and Marissa West, a rising star who left last year just eight months after joining GM's senior leadership team.
In choosing its next leader, the automaker's board faces a fundamental question: Is GM a tech company capable of competing with Tesla and Waymo, or an old-school vehicle manufacturer married to large gas-guzzling vehicles?
Barra prefers the former and Anderson is the latest in a string of Silicon Valley transplants she has hired at GM. The newcomer is one of a small group of executives who sit on GM's influential executive strategy team. Anderson, however, is a relative unknown on Wall Street, especially compared with Jacobson, who is a former Delta Air Lines CFO, and Reuss, who was a contender for the CEO title when it went to Barra.
The Silicon Valley aura has proven elusive to GM, as it has to other automakers chasing the same strategy. The company ditched plans last year for its Cruise robotaxi program after spending $10 billion and a decade on its development. It has suffered setbacks around its EV and autonomous-driving strategies. The company in October booked a $1.6 billion charge on its EV business as demand for the vehicles sinks .
A parade of executives plucked from Apple, Google and Tesla have come and gone in quick succession, while GM lags behind Waymo and Chinese players such as Baidu and WeRide in developing a system that allows drivers to take their eyes off the road.
"The way things are going, you just want someone from Silicon Valley to stick around for more than six to nine months," said Morningstar analyst David Whiston, who has covered the automotive industry since 2007.
Since Anderson joined, a trio of high-ranking tech executives have left GM. One of them, the company's software-engineering chief, left a week after appearing on stage alongside Anderson and Barra to roll out a new tech strategy.
"Our strategy is bigger than any one leader, and it's working," the GM spokeswoman said.
The new tech strategy, helmed by Anderson, aims to bring eyes-off driving to the market in 2028 in an electric Cadillac SUV. It also includes making a lower-cost battery and introducing artificial-intelligence into GM vehicles like the Chevy Silverado.
A soft-spoken technophile with a doctorate in robotics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Anderson has a collection of patents and papers on autonomous technology. Asked recently to outline GM's tech strategy, he described a vision of future electric vehicles with "much higher computational ceiling or headroom."
He went on to clarify: "What effectively that means for you practically in your life is that your car will get better the longer you own it."
Within GM, Anderson's arrival was cheered by many employees involved in the automaker's self-driving technology, still stinging from GM's move last year to end the Cruise program. Anderson has rehired some key Cruise staffers and, in internal meetings, praised the unit and its progress on the technology.
Cruise was an early mover in the robotaxi race. But its reputation suffered from alarming mishaps and an accident in California that prompted GM to pull the cars from several markets. The automaker said it scrapped the program because of rising competition and costs.
Employees in wider parts of the GM universe are less sold on Anderson. Some question the wisdom of bringing back Cruise leaders, given missteps at the unit. The new boss irked some within GM's ranks when, in a recent town hall, he defended the company's use of a controversial performance-ranking system to grade employees.
Anderson didn't respond to requests for comment and GM declined to make him available. In a statement provided by GM, Anderson said he was concerned that he might be perceived as a "Silicon Valley cowboy pew-pewing his way" through GM.
"While some tension is inevitable through transformations, the team understands, appreciates, and is already making great strides as it accelerates and broadens the pace of innovation," he said.
Anderson codes in his free time and plays in a Silicon Valley hockey league. Where Barra has spent her entire career at GM, starting there in college more than 40 years ago, Anderson has moved around, working at McKinsey before joining Tesla in 2015.
At Tesla, Anderson led development of the Model X SUV and the company's Autopilot system. He butted heads with Musk as the two worked to develop cars that drive themselves.
In 2016, he resigned from Tesla in part over the company's marketing of a new self-driving feature. Tesla sued Anderson, accusing him of taking proprietary documents and improperly colluding to recruit Autopilot employees to work at Aurora. Anderson said the lawsuit was meritless; Aurora eventually agreed to pay Tesla $100,000 as part of a settlement.
Anderson went on to spend nearly a decade at Aurora and led development of a Lidar system that bounces lasers off objects to capture surroundings in 3-D.
Aurora has self-driving trucks on the road in Texas. The vehicles are delivering freight between Fort Worth and El Paso and Dallas and Houston, as well as hauling fracking sand on public roads and highways in the Permian Basin.
The company has hit most of its milestones, but it has also faced setbacks. In spring 2025, two weeks after putting trucks on the road without drivers, Aurora had to add human observers at the request of one of the manufacturers it partners with. Aurora's share price has languished amid questions of how readily it can amass customers.
"It's easy to underestimate the complexity" involved in integrating autonomous technology into vehicles, said Ophir Samson, a former Aurora executive who worked closely with Anderson and later spent a year at GM.
Anderson was able to juggle all those aspects -- from safety engineering to aerodynamics -- while winning over often-cynical executives at automakers and trucking companies, Samson said. At one point, he said, as Aurora raced to finish a demo truck for a major customer, Anderson showed up to the shop in Pittsburgh to help finish the job.
"The executives heard he was really involved in turning screws and bolts. It went over really well," he said. "He did not come in as a chest-beating, 'We are Silicon Valley and we know how it's done.'"
Write to Sharon Terlep at sharon.terlep@wsj.com and Suzanne Vranica at Suzanne.Vranica@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 21, 2025 21:00 ET (02:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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