Intel acquires self-driving car tech company Mobileye for $15.3 billion

Late last year, Intel announced that it would be investing $250 million in self-driving cars over the next two years. According to the company, the auto market is on the cusp of a giant revolution with the widespread introduction of autonomous vehicles, or self-driving cars, and that it is simply keeping up with the competition.

To that end, Intel has announced today that it is acquiring Israel-based company Mobileye for $15.3 billion.

Mobileye is a company that develops vision-based advanced driver assistance systems and driverless technology. Intel has announced that as a part of its definitive all-cash deal, it will be acquiring Mobileye for a fully-diluted equity value of $15.3 billion and enterprise value of $14.7 billion, priced at $63.54 per share.

Intel says that this acquisition will allow high-end technology from both the companies to merge and develop driverless solutions from the cloud through the network to the car. In a letter to employees, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich had the following to say about the acquisition:

Many of you have asked why we think autonomous cars and vehicles are so important to Intel’s future. The answer is DATA. Our strategy is to make Intel the driving force of the data revolution across every technology and every industry. We are a DATA company. The businesses we focus on, and deliver solutions to, create, use and analyze massive amounts of data.

[...] At four terabytes of data per day, the average autonomous car will put out the data equivalent of approximately 3,000 people. Put just one million autonomous vehicles on the road and you have the data equivalent of half the world’s population. This massive amount of data requires all of Intel’s assets to provide the cost-effective high performance solutions our customers need. The addition of Mobileye to our family provides the data path to our computing solutions becoming the intelligent set of eyes that will allow a vehicle to see and define the world around it.

The deal is expected to position Intel as a leading company in the automotive industry and speed up innovation in the sector. The company estimates the opportunity in this market to be worth up to $70 billion by 2030.

Source: Intel