The bigger accusation the article makes is that Levandowski made a deal with Uber to create a startup with Waymo's stolen data, that would later be acquired by

The bigger accusation the article makes is that Levandowski made a deal with Uber to create a startup with Waymo's stolen data, that would later be acquired by Uber. So Otto was essentially just a vessel for that stolen data, created simply to transfer the IP to Uber. If true, that'd be much bigger and much more damaging than just stealing some files.