Intel acquires self-driving car tech company Mobileye in a $15.3B deal

According to a release on the official website earlier today, Intel has acquired Mobileye. A subsidiary of Intel will commence a tender offer to acquire all of Mobileye's issued and outstanding ordinary shares for $63.54 per share in cash, representing a fully diluted equity value of approximately $15.3 billion and an enterprise value of $14.7 billion.

The acquisition was initiated to couple Mobileye’s leading computer vision expertise with Intel’s high-performance computing and connectivity prowess to create automated driving solutions from the cloud through the network to the car.All of the current Mobileye employees (approximately 660) will continue to be employed following close. Mobileye will remain headquartered in Israel, and Intel’s Automated Driving Group (ADG) will join Mobileye.The combined global organisation will be led by Mobileye’s Co-founder, Chairman, and CTO, Prof Amnon Shashua, who will further report to Intel CEO, Brian Krzanich. Intel Senior Vice President Doug Davis will also report to Shashua and oversee the combined organisation’s engagement across Intel’s business groups. Intel estimates the vehicle systems, data, and services market opportunity to be up to $70 billion by 2030. The combination is part of Intel's plans to close in on competitors in the highly and fully autonomous vehicles market.

"By pooling together our infrastructure and resources, we can enhance and accelerate our combined know-how in the areas of mapping, virtual driving, simulators, development tool chains, hardware, data centres, and high-performance computing platforms. Combined, we believe we will have the technology and the talent to deliver a leading cloud-to-car (end-to-end) solution for autonomous driving," explains Intel, in the release.

Today, Mobileye estimates its products to have been installed in approximately 15.7 million vehicles worldwide through December 31, 2016. Its technology is available with 21 OEMs and has announced agreements to collaborate on crowdsourced HD mapping (Road Experience Management or “REM” mapping service) with Volkswagen and BMW.