Intel to acquire Israeli autonomous technology company Mobileye

US technology giant Intel, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of semiconductor chips, is to purchase Israeli autonomous technology firm Mobileye, in a bid to speed up the development of connected and autonomous technology.

Intel has announced it will acquire ‘all of the issued and outstanding ordinary shares’ of Israeli company Mobileye, which develops computer vision and machine learning technology, and data analyses, localization and mapping for advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving.

The deal will involve Intel paying $63.54 per Mobileye share in cash, representing an equity value of approximately $15.3 billion and an enterprise value of $14.7 billion.

The acquisition is expected to accelerate innovation for the automotive industry and position Intel as a technology provider in the fast-growing market for highly- and fully- autonomous vehicles. Intel estimates the vehicle systems, data and services market opportunity to be up to $70 billion by 2030. 

As cars progress from assisted driving to fully autonomous, and become increasingly connected with each other and surrounding infrastructure, they are increasingly becoming data centers on wheels. Intel expects that by 2020, autonomous vehicles will generate 4,000Gb of data per day, which plays to Intel’s strengths in high-performance computing and network connectivity. 

“Intel provides critical foundational technologies for autonomous driving including plotting the car’s path and making real-time driving decisions,” said Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO. “Mobileye brings the industry’s best automotive-grade computer vision and strong momentum with automakers and suppliers. Together, we can accelerate the future of autonomous driving with improved performance in a cloud-to-car solution at a lower cost for automakers.”

“We expect the growth towards autonomous driving to be transformative. It will provide consumers with safer, more flexible, and less costly transportation options, and provide incremental business model opportunities for our automaker customers,” said Mr. Ziv Aviram, Mobileye co-founder, president and CEO. “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 centers and high-performance computing platforms. Together, we will provide an attractive value proposition for the automotive industry.”