Intel acquired an Israeli self-driving car camera company Mobileye for $15.3 Billion. According to Reuters and other major international news agencies, the acquisition bid is approximately 34% premium added to the closing price last week, marking the largest M&A not only in the self-driving car industry but also in Israel.
As a frontrunner during the PC era, Intel struggled to dominate in the Post-PC era. Consequently, Intel has recently focused on the development of self-driving technology to hold its place in the computing area. In addition, Intel has also been investing heavily in IoT and AR/VR technologies.
The core technology of self-driving cars is to gather and process a mass amount of data on road conditions and to facilitate communication among the cars. Mobileye is the first company in the world to develop Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), which notifies speed limit information and potential risk of accidents to the drivers. Mobileye captures 70% of ADAS market and collaborates with 27 car companies, including BMW. In fact, Mobileye used to be Tesla’s initial partner. After it went public in 2014, Mobileye’s total market capital is approximately $10.5 Billion.
Since 2016, Intel, Mobileye and BMW have collaborated to develop self-driving technology to commercialize it by 2021. Intel commented, “We envision car system, data, and service market to be around $70 Billion by 2030. We will continue to invest in our forte on data-intensive computing and cloud technology.”
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