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Amazon <\/a> announced<\/a> Friday that it will acquire Zoox, a self-driving startup founded in 2014 that has raised nearly $1 billion in funding and which aims to develop autonomous driving technology, including vehicles, for the purposes of providing a full-stack solution for ride-hailing.<\/p>\n Zoox <\/a> will continue to exist as a standalone business, according to Amazon’s announcement, with current CEO Aicha Evans continuing in her role, as well as CTO and co-founder Jesse Levinson. Their overall company mission will also remain the same, the release notes. The Financial Time reports that the deal is worth $1.2 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Wall Street Journal had reported at the end of May that Amazon was looking at Zoox as a potential acquisition target<\/a>, and that the deal had reached the advanced stages.<\/p>\n Zoox has chosen one of the most expensive possible paths in the autonomous driving industry, seeking to build a fit-for-purpose self-driving passenger vehicle from the ground up, along with the software and AI end to provide its autonomous driving capabilities. Zoox has done some notable cost-cutting in the past year, and it brought in CEO Evans in early 2019 from Intel<\/a>, likely with an eye toward leveraging her experience to help the company move toward commercialization.<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtu.be\/gQ4yZTPgpOE<\/a><\/p>\n With a deep-pocketed parent like Amazon, Zoox should gain the runway it needs to keep up with its primary rival — Waymo, which originated as Google’s self-driving car project, and which counts Google owner Alphabet as its corporate owner.<\/p>\n Amazon has been working on its own autonomous vehicle technology projects, including its last-mile delivery robots, which are six-wheeled sidewalk-treading bots designed to carry small packages to customer homes. The company has also invested in autonomous driving startup Aurora<\/a>, and it has tested self-driving trucks powered by self-driving freight startup Embark<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Zoox acquisition is specifically aimed at helping the startup “bring their vision of autonomous ride-hailing to reality,” according to Amazon, so this doesn’t look to be immediately focused on Amazon’s logistics operations for package delivery. But Zoox’s ground-up technology, which includes developing zero-emission vehicles built specifically for autonomous use, could easily translate to that side of Amazon’s operations.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, if Zoox really does remain on course for passenger ride-hailing, that could open up a whole new market for Amazon — one which would put it head-to-head with Uber and Lyft once the autonomous driving technology matures.<\/p>\n Tags:<\/b> Darrell Etherington<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" <\/div>\nSee Campaign: <\/strong>https:\/\/crunchbase.com\/organization\/zoox<\/a>
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Darrell Etherington<\/p>\n
<\/a>, Wire<\/a>, United States<\/a>, English<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Amazon announced Friday that it will acquire Zoox, a self-driving startup founded in 2014 that has raised nearly $1 billion in funding and which aims to develop autonomous driving technology, including vehicles, for the purposes of providing a full-stack solution for ride-hailing. Zoox will continue to exist as a standalone business, according to Amazon’s announcement, with current CEO … Continue reading Amazon to acquire autonomous driving startup Zoox<\/span><\/a> Continue Reading