yes he could, the team and him had a killer track record and he wouldn't admit to stealing anything from Waymo
"He joined Google in 2007 as part of its Maps team and helped to build the company’s Street View product. When Google gave the green light to begin working on a self-driving car in 2009, Mr. Thrun picked Mr. Levandowski for the original team.
Mr. Levandowski gained some notoriety within Google for selling start-ups, which he had done as side projects, to his employer. In his biography for a real estate firm, for which he is a board member, Mr. Levandowski said he sold three automation and robotics start-ups to Google, including 510 Systems and Anthony’s Robots, for nearly $500 million. After this story was published, the real estate firm updated its website erasing Mr. Levandowski’s biography and said that it had “erroneously reported certain facts incorrectly without Mr. Levandowski’s knowledge.”"
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/technology/anthony-levand...
"And yet, one of Google’s most strategic acquisitions has mysteriously been actively blocked from public view. An investigation by IEEE Spectrum has uncovered the surprising fact that Google’s innovative self-driving car and the revolutionary Street View camera technology that preceded it were largely built by 510 Systems, a tiny start-up in Berkeley, Calif."
http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/th...