Ford has been building cars for over a century, and even invented the way that every company builds cars. It’s also been working on self-driving cars for the better part of a decade, and aims to have its first fleet of autonomous vehicles on the road by 2021. But making software is still a relatively new beast for automakers, and to help hit that four-year goal, Ford today said it would invest $1 billion over five years in a new startup called Argo AI.
Ford $F has been building cars for over a century, and even invented the way that every company builds cars. It’s also been working on self-driving cars for the better part of a decade, and aims to have its first fleet of autonomous vehicles on the road by 2021. But making software is still a relatively new beast for automakers, and to help hit that four-year goal, Ford today said it would invest $1 billion over five years in a new startup called Argo AI.
Argo AI was founded by Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander, both alumni of Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center, which Uber $UBER famously routed in 2014 to bolster its self-driving car team. Rander actually worked at .
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Ford’s own self-driving car team will partner with Argo’s team in an effort to “strengthen the commercialization of self-driving vehicles,” according to a statement from the company. Argo plans to staff up to 200 people, with a headquarters in Pittsburgh and operations both in Silicon Valley and near Ford’s headquarters in Michigan. It isn’t yet clear how much of the $1 billion pledge Argo will be receiving upfront, and Ford declined to comment.
While there has been some discussion around whether Silicon Valley companies like Alphabet, Tesla $TSLA, and Uber would be able to upend traditional automakers in the race to develop self-driving cars, it seems increasingly likely that the future will be driven by partnerships. Building cars is a difficult, complicated process, which car companies like Ford, GM, and Fiat-Chrysler have down to a science. Although Tesla has arguably become the first successful new US car company in decades, it still doesn’t produce vehicles at a scale anywhere near that of Detroit automakers. Waymo recently partnered with Fiat-Chrysler to develop cars for its service, and Mercedes producer Daimler is doing the same for Uber. GM also purchased a self-driving car startup, called Cruise Automation, for $1 billion in 2016, a move not unlike Ford’s investment today.
“We are at an inflection point in using artificial intelligence in a wide range of applications, and the successful deployment of self-driving cars will fundamentally change how people and goods move,” Salesky said in a release. “We are energized by Ford’s commitment and vision for the future of mobility, and we believe this partnership will enable self-driving cars to be commercialized and deployed at scale to extend affordable mobility to all.”
