In recent years, Apple has been buying a large number of companies, some of which, not having enough relevance, go unnoticed by the media. However, others do, such as Beats Music and Texture, two purchases that have become Apple Music and Apple News + services.
On other occasions, it buys companies, not only to acquire intellectual property, but also to obtain the services of the engineers that make it up a type of purchase called «acqui-hire». The next company that could be acquired by Apple is Dirve.ai, a company that has developed an autonomous driving system.
According to The Information, citing sources related to the negotiations, Apple is targeting this company, negotiations that, as usual by Apple, has denied. Drive.ai was founded in 2015 by students at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
They are currently based in Mountain View. Last year it launched a pilot testing program in Texas to test its autonomous transshipment vehicle. As we can read on its website: "Drive.ai uses artificial intelligence to create transport solutions that improve current mobility status."
Drive.ai raised $ 77 million over the past year, its main investors being New Enterprise Associates and Nvidia, but apparently the financing rounds were not enough to maintain the independence of the company.
If an agreement is finally reached, it will most likely be the case, Apple will take over the entire engineering staff, which according to The Information, was about 100, including specialists in neural networks.
Since the end of 2016, Apple reconverted Project Titan into the development of an autonomous driving system, instead of investing resources in designing and manufacturing your own vehicle from scratch. It currently has 69 autonomous vehicles, with a driver, on the road in California.