Apple purchases Drive.ai

Self driving vehicule. © Drive.ai.

You would have thought that Apple had given up on autonomous driving, especially after last January when it laid off 200 staff working on the secretive Project Titan. Nothing is further from the truth: in fact, the company bought Drive.ai, a Mountain View-based autonomous driving startup, valued at 200 million dollars in 2017. Drive.ai differentiated itself by developing kits to turn regular vehicles into autonomous ones. Since this purchase, for an undisclosed amount, Drive.ai ceased operations and Apple has hired dozens of its engineers and designers, while 90 other employees were laid off, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Apple has always been tight-lipped about its vehicle division, and no-one ever knows exactly what it is working on. If you dream of one day owning an iCar with a fetching apple above the grille, you’ll have to be patient at best… or keep dreaming at worst.

⇨ Axios, “Apple acquires self-driving startup Drive.ai.”