Sources: Amazon discussing deal to buy stake in and provide cloud computing services for HERE
Amazon, Microsoft look for big data role in self-driving cars — Amazon.com and Microsoft are in talks to supply cloud computing to digital mapping business HERE, owned by a group …
Context & Ripple Effects
HERE is the mapping asset the German car industry pulled out of Nokia's orbit — BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz were preparing a formal bid at 'considerably more than €2B' back in May 2015, and the automakers ended up owning it collectively. Now the owners are opening the cap table: Daimler has confirmed talks with Amazon and Microsoft about investment, and Bosch says it is weighing a stake too (April 2016).
The Reuters report adds the commercial layer: this is not just equity — Amazon and Microsoft are both negotiating to supply the cloud computing underneath HERE's maps. That matters because HERE has since positioned itself as the data layer for autonomy, including a partnership with Mobileye on high-definition mapping for self-driving cars, which is exactly the workload that needs hyperscale infrastructure.
First-order effects
- The automaker owners of HERE get two hyperscalers competing to fund and host its mapping platform, offloading the capital cost of HD-map infrastructure while keeping strategic control.
- Amazon and Microsoft each gain a contractual foothold in automotive location data — a market neither could enter by building maps themselves.
Second-order effects
- Bosch's stated interest in a stake signals that tier-one suppliers see ownership of the car-data layer as worth paying for, widening the buyer pool beyond the original automaker consortium.
- Microsoft hedges its dependence on any single map source by pairing its expanded HERE deal with a TomTom partnership for Azure location services, keeping pricing leverage over HERE.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the autonomous-driving stack consolidates into alliances of automakers, suppliers and hyperscalers — with cloud providers using equity stakes, not just service contracts, to lock in the data layer.
- Amazon's later move to put Alexa inside HERE-powered navigation systems (January 2019) shows where this leads: the stake-and-cloud deal becomes a channel for the assistant and commerce layer in the car.
The trend: Hyperscalers are shifting from selling cloud capacity to the auto industry toward buying equity in its core data assets, making compute a bargaining chip for control of the in-car stack.