Apple to buy the autonomous car company Drive.ai

Apple would want to buy the autonomous car company Drive.ai, which is going through a difficult economic time. Those in the block would be interested in the autonomous driving company to help them boost their own department specialized in this technology.

The agreement could mean that dozens of Drive.ai workers end up working at Apple, according to the source. Drive.ai, which has been developing small prototypes in Texas, started looking for a buyer in early February. The decline of Drive.ai (valued at around 200 million dollars years ago) portends further consolidation in the robotic taxi sector. Investors have poured billions of dollars into dozens of startups, some of which are facing real technical problems. Even those with better financing, such as Waymo or Uber, run into many economic and technological challenges.

Years ago, Apple started its own autonomous car project, Titan, but since then it has changed a lot (including objectives, responsible), and has left a few workers on the road. Afterward, workers and managers of companies such as Waymo and Tesla have been hired.

Drive.ai raised $77 million over the past year, with its main investors New Enterprise Associates and Nvidia, but apparently, the rounds of funding were not enough to maintain the independence of the company. In recent years, Apple has been dedicated to buying a large number of companies, some of which, not having enough relevance, go unnoticed by the media.

Although so far Apple has not confirmed this rumor, as usual, to be positive this negotiation could mean that the Cupertino company may acquire engineers and experts in at drive.ai from driving and artificial intelligence field and 100 engineers from the neural networking sector.

Now, it seems that the next step will be to acquire Drive.ai; or, at least, hire their engineers, some of whom are highly versed in the autonomous car field. Last February, Drive.ai had more than 100 engineers