The executive leading Uber's quest to build a flying car is leaving the company
- Uber Chief Product Officer Jeff Holden, the head of the company's flying car initiative, is leaving the company.
- His departure comes just weeks after he was a keynote speaker at Uber's futuristic transportation conference.
- Holden has worked at Uber for four years.
Uber Chief Product Officer Jeff Holden, the exec behind the Uber Elevate flying car initiative, is leaving the company.
The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, and confirmed to Business Insider by a person familiar with the company's operations.
Holden's exit comes just weeks after he was a keynote speaker at Uber's Elevate Summit, a conference held in Los Angeles where leaders from the company discuss the future of transportation. Ahead of the summit, Uber released a prototype of its flying taxi, and revealed it would begin testing a flying taxi service, UberAir, in 2020.
It is not known at this time why Holden is leaving the company, or where he's heading next. Uber exec Eric Allison will be taking over as head of the Elevate initiative in Holden's absence.
Holden had been at Uber for four years, where he was hired by former CEO Travis Kalanick. Before that, he was senior vice president of product management at Groupon, and a key player at Amazon as senior vice president of worldwide discovery.
"As demonstrated by last week's Uber Elevate Summit, we're incredibly bullish on the future of aerial ridesharing. Under the leadership of Eric Allison, the Elevate team is set up for success and will continue to chart the course for this growing industry," an Uber spokesperson told Business Insider.