Intel Acquires Autonomous driving Firm Mobileye For $15.3 Billion
Is autonomous driving a technology to bet on in immediate future?
I may be short-sighted with my faith in autonomous driving technology; that's why I see the real commercial use of autonomous driving in particular way. I think rather than 100 pefrcent autonomous vehicles, the technology will be implemented for dire situations. That's when the human driver becomes helpless due to manual driving control failure or the situations which need lightening fast decision making. Don't know about five years from today, but today I cannot visualize fully autonomous cars and personal vehicles. My view rests on facts such as too many cars and too little resources that can manage autonomous driving.
That said, the autonomous driving is an area which has a foreseeable future. I may not be seeing it, but tech giants surely do.
Intel is waging a big bet on autonomous driving
According to reports, Intel is acquiring the Jerusalem, Israel based self-driving tech firm Mobileye. The deal is worth $15.3 billion, making it the most valuable acquisition in the history of the Israeli tech industry. Intel’s acquisition of the company will see it purchase all of Mobileye’s issued stock, as well as all of its outstanding ordinary stock for $63.54 per share.
Mobileye is currently valued at approximately $10.5 billion according to its New York Stock Exchange. Mobileye is a relatively established name in the industry and is already collaborating with a number of major automakers. Intel and mobile Eye are already working together from 2016 in the area of autonomous driving. Intel plans to to invest approximately $250 million into developing autonomous driving solutions by 2018.
Intel along with Mobileye and BMW, are planning to bring the first prototypes developed through this partnership in the United States and Europe later this year. Mobileye has previously collaborated with Tesla.
Intel is waging a big bet on autonomous driving even if it's facing an increasing competition from the likes of Qualcomm and Nvidia in autonomous driving. The deal has a potential of bringing Intel, Mobileye's expertise along with a know how into Tesla's dominance.
Autonomous driving makes Intel shell out a whopping $15.3 Billion
Anil Singh
Monday, March 13, 2017
