A Drive.ai vehicle trundling around Texas
Apple has acquired self-driving vehicle start-up Drive.ai for an undisclosed sum.
On Tuesday, Apple told Axios that it had hired dozens of Drive.ai engineers to boost its own self-driving efforts. The iPhone maker also purchased the autonomous vehicles’ fleet and other assets of the company as part of the deal.
Earlier this month, The Information reported that Drive.ai had been looking for buyers since February and that Apple was also in talks with the company to reach a deal.
Drive.ai was founded in 2015 by a group of researchers from Stanford University.
The company had been running a small fleet of test shuttles in Texas. It carried out fixed-route tests with its self-driving vehicles that ran on public roads.
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Drive.ai’s shuttles carried passengers on routes connecting the University of Texas (Arlington), the Dallas Cowboys stadium, a convention centre, an office park, and the Texas Rangers ballpark.
Like other companies developing autonomous vehicle technology, the company designed “kits” to turn regular cars into self-driving vehicles.
Each of those shuttles was equipped with radars, lidars, cameras, GPS, and sensors. These devices collect data from the outside world, which is interpreted in near-real time by computers on-board the vehicle.
The screens displayed symbols and other visual cues to communicate their next course of action.
Drive.ai was once valued at $200 million. According to Crunchbase, it has raised $77 million in five funding rounds, with investors including Nvidia GPU Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Northern Light Venture Capital, GGV Capital, and HOF Capital.
However, the company rapidly burned through its funding with no tangible end product or service to show for it.
On 12 June, the company informed California’s Employment Development Department that it was not in a position to continue its operations and planned to lay off its entire staff of about 90 people in a permanent closure.
In the letter, which was first spotted by the San Francisco Chronicle, Drive.ai general counsel Thomas Yih wrote that the closure was forced by the events that were “beyond Drive.ai’s control or current knowledge”.
It is not yet clear how many of Drive.ai’s engineers will join Apple’s team, although some engineers at the company updated their LinkedIn profiles to reveal that they are now Apple employees.