Intel to acquire driverless car tech firm - Mobileye

Intel is all set to acquire Mobileye, a driverless car tech firm for an an enterprise value of $14.7 billion.

"This acquisition will combine the best in class technologies from both companies, spanning connectivity, computer vision, data center, sensor fusion, high performance computing, localization and mapping, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

"This acquisition is a great step forward for our shareholders, the automotive industry and consumers," said Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO.

He said,"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."

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The combination is expected to accelerate innovation for the automotive industry and position Intel as a leading technology provider in the fast-growing market for highly and fully autonomous vehicles.

The combined global autonomous driving organization, which will consist of Mobileye and Intel's Automated Driving Group, will be headquartered in Israel and led by Prof. Amnon Shashua, Mobileye's CoFounder, Chairman and CTO.

Intel said the new organization 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.

"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 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," Aviram added.