Intel will be buying Israeli autonomous vehicle technology firm Mobileye for $15.3 billion.
Mobileye is a company developing computer vision and machine learning, data analysis, localization and mapping for advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving. Intel hopes to combine Mobileye’s expertise with their technology in high performance computing and connectivity to bring automated driving solutions from cloud to car.
The autonomous vehicles industry has been growing rapidly, with major tech companies all pummelling in to take a piece of the pie. Intel estimates the vehicle systems, data and services market opportunity to be up to $70 billion by 2030. With this acquisition, Intel is aiming to invest in data-intensive market opportunities leveraging on the company’s strengths in computing and connectivity from the cloud, through the network, to the device.
Intel expects that by 2020, autonomous vehicles will generate 4,000 GB of data per day. The company plans to take advantage of their technological capabilities to build on the need for high-performance, memory, high-bandwidth connectivity, and computer vision technology.
The combined global autonomous driving organisation within Intel will consist of Mobileye and Intel’s Automated Driving Group, and headquartered in Israel. The team will be led by Prof. Amnon Shashua, Mobileye’s CoFounder, Chairman and CTO. The organisation will support both companies’ existing production programs and build upon relationships with automotive OEMs, Tier-1 suppliers and semiconductor partners to develop advanced driving assist, highly autonomous and fully autonomous driving programs. Intel Senior Vice President Doug Davis will oversee the combined organization’s engagement across Intel’s business groups and will report to Prof. Amnon Shashua after the transaction’s closing.
Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO said in a release, “Intel provides critical foundational technologies for autonomous driving including plotting the car’s path and making real-time driving decisions. Mobileye brings the industry’s best automotive-grade computer vision and strong momentum with automakers and suppliers. Together, we can accelerate the future of autonomous driving with improved performance in a cloud-to-car solution at a lower cost for automakers.”
“We expect the growth towards autonomous driving to be transformative. It will provide consumers with safer, more flexible, and less costly transportation options, and provide incremental business model opportunities for our automaker customers,” said Mr. Ziv Aviram, Mobileye Co-Founder, President and CEO. “By pooling together our infrastructure and resources, we can enhance and accelerate our combined know-how in the areas of mapping, virtual driving, simulators, development tool chains, hardware, data centers and high-performance computing platforms. Together, we will provide an attractive value proposition for the automotive industry.”
The transaction is expected to close within the next nine months.
