Ford announced an investment in Pivotal yesterday. Pivotal is known as a cloud-based software platform company headquartered in San Francisco, to further enhance its software development capabilities and deliver to customers more quickly.

The $182.2 million investment in Pivotal aims to help drive Ford’s transition to an auto and a mobility company. Ford is continuing to focus on and invest in its core business – designing, manufacturing, marketing, financing and servicing cars, SUVs, trucks and electrified vehicles. At the same time, the company is aggressively pursuing emerging opportunities through Ford Smart Mobility – its plan to be a leader in connectivity, mobility, autonomous vehicles, the customer experience, and data and analytics.

Mark Fields, Ford president and CEO, in a press released said: “Expanding our business to be both an auto and mobility company requires leading-edge software expertise to deliver outstanding customer experiences. Our investment in Pivotal will help strengthen our ability to deliver these customer experiences at the speed of Silicon Valley, including continually expanding FordPass^® – our digital, physical and personal mobility experience platform.”

Software plays a growing role in new vehicles as demonstrated by the all new F-150 that features more than 150 million lines of code, whereas a typical smartphone operating system has approximately 12 million lines.

“Investing in Pivotal builds on our current strengths in software development,” said Marcy Klevorn, Ford vice president and CIO, who will join the board of directors at Pivotal. “We plan to quickly add new state-of-the-art software engineering capabilities across the Ford enterprise.”

In addition, Ford and Pivotal plan to open new software labs in strategic locations in both the United States and Europe.