Intel to acquire self-driving firm Mobileye for $15 billion

If you think that this is the biggest transaction of the business, you are correct, because it is the highest purchase of a company exclusively focused on the self-driving sector.

The deal values Mobileye at $63.54 a share, a 34% premium to its closing price Friday. It is said that the deal is made “in an effort to boost the chipmaker’s position in the autonomous vehicle market”. He also said he and Chief Technology Officer Amnon Shashua will be “running Mobileye just as we have done in the past”. Other notable exits that have also tapped into the country’s expertise in computer vision and machine learning have included Google buying mapping startup Waze for $1.1 billion and Apple buying 3D sensor specialist PrimeSense for reportedly around $300 million. Those markets remain tiny, but Intel sees them as opportunities to compensate for the fading PC business.

“Mobileye’s technology is very critical”.

With this acquisition, Intel and Mobileye will form a new organization under Intel’s Automated Driving Group, with a headquarters based in Israel.

Intel and Mobileye’s partnership has proved a little stronger, joining forces past year alongside Delphi, to build a self-driving auto platform, for example. Mobileye, which until recently powered Tesla’s Autopilot systems, released a video late previous year showing an Audi driving down the street autonomously using the company’s technology. Amid safety concerns about Tesla’s Autopilot technology, the two companies engaged in public finger-pointing. Mobileye is attributed with about 70% of the global market for advanced driver assistance technologies and anti-collision systems, which means that Intel will control a sizable part of that segment.

The deal is the biggest-ever acquisition of an Israeli technology company and Mobileye’s shares surged 32 per cent in premarket trading in NY.

The company has 600 employees and had Q4 revenues of $173 million.

Mobileye, based in Jerusalem, was founded in 1999 by Prof. Beneath him, Intel SVP Doug Davis will oversee how Mobileye and Intel work together across the whole company.

“What’s important now is that the production remains in Israel, where some 300 worldwide companies are located”, Israeli Economy Minister Eli Cohen told army radio.

It comes with Intel and Mobileye previously collaborating with German automaker BMW to develop self-driving cars.

Early this morning news broke on Haaretz.com that Intel was going to announce a takeover of Mobileye for a whopping $15.3 billion.

The acquisition, which is already approved by the boards of both companies, is expected to close within nine months.