Spencer Penn
Founder and technologist who worked at Tesla and Waymo and is the CEO of LightSource, building AI-native procurement and direct materials software for large enterprises.
Best podcasts with Spencer Penn
Ranked by the Snipd community
Feb 3, 2026 • 1h 1min
#101 Tesla War Stories, Self-Driving at Waymo, and Building the Salesforce of BOM (Spencer Penn of LightSource)
Spencer Penn, a founder and former engineer at Tesla and Waymo now leading LightSource, shares war stories from rapid Tesla development and contrasts Tesla’s speed culture with Waymo’s methodical autonomy work. He recounts Model 3 production chaos, insights on self-driving subsystems, and why he started an AI-native procurement company to fix long-ignored BOM problems.
