Intel Acquiring Mobileye For ~$15 Billion (New Record)
Tech giant Intel has come to agreement with the Israel-based self-driving vehicle and machine learning firm Mobileye to acquire it — for ~$15 billion. That’s the highest price ever paid to acquire an Israeli tech company — and also the highest paid for a self-driving tech company.
To be more specific, as per the agreement, a subsidiary of Intel will be acquiring all of the issued and outstanding ordinary shares of Mobileye for $63.54 per share in cash (an equity value of around $15.3 billion, and an enterprise value of $14.7 billion).
So, I guess that those wondering about the long-term prospects and strategies of Intel have their answer — Intel is banking on capturing a large market share in the self-driving vehicle and machine learning spaces. (Rival NVIDIA is of course pursuing a similar strategy as well.)
The press release provides context:
“Intel estimates the vehicle systems, data, and services market opportunity to be up to $70 billion by 2030. This transaction extends Intel’s strategy to invest in data-intensive market opportunities that build on the company’s strengths in computing and connectivity from the cloud, through the network, to the device. …
”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 Co-Founder, Chairman and CTO. The 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. 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.”
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich commented: “This acquisition is a great step forward for our shareholders, the automotive industry and consumers. 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.”
Interesting news — though, not completely surprising. Intel has been making overtures suggesting such a move in recent times.
The acquisition is expected to be closed within the next 9 months according to the press release on the matter. Both of the companies’ Boards of Directors have approved the deal.
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Latest CleanTechnica.TV Video
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
