Stanford’s Drive.ai sees Apple on the right

Drive.ai, a US-based autonomous driving software spinout of Stanford University, is to be acquired by technology company Apple for an undisclosed sum after weeks of speculation, the Verge reported yesterday.
The deal comes as Drive.ai prepares to shut its headquarters on June 28, according to a state regulatory document cited by TechCrunch.
Global Corporate Venturing, GUV’s sister title, tracked Apple’s interest in Drive.ai earlier this month, in an acqui-hire deal that was mooted to involve Apple taking on a select number of Drive.ai’s autonomous driving engineers.
The corporate has now confirmed an acquisition will take place. Sources told Axios that Apple will own Drive.ai’s autonomous vehicles and other assets, while directly recruiting team members mostly specialised in engineering and product design.
Drive.ai has been piloting a ride hailing service with driverless, bright orange vehicles which navigate roads using its deep-learning-driven software. The company has conducted fixed-route testing of its vehicles on public roads without human driver supervision.
Drive.ai had planned to integrate its software with autonomous cars built to the needs of its industry partners, however it has searched for a buyer in recent months in an apparent bid to bring the project to fruition.
The spinout was founded in 2015 by former Stanford University graduate students working in the artificial intelligence lab of Andrew Ng, chairman of Drive.ai’s board and an assistant professor in the university’s computer science department.
Drive.ai’s had raised more than $77m prior to the acquisition, including $15m raised from ride hailing service Grab and undisclosed additional investors in October 2017, and a $50m series B round closed in June 2017 that was led by New Enterprise Associates with contributions from GGV Capital and Northern Light Capital.
– Feature image courtesy of Drive.ai