Sources: Apple is preparing to buy self-driving car startup Drive.ai in a likely acquihire; Drive.ai has raised about $77M and was valued at about $200M in 2017
and, rumor has it, that buyer could be @apple. https://buff.ly/2Z8tM8I pic.twitter.com/38vXO2Wfi4 Amir Efrati / @amir : Nearly 4 months later, “end scene” seems to be in order. https://www.theinformation.com/ ... @tweetermeyer : Woah, Apple in talks to acqui-hire http://drive.ai/ and its >100 engineers. The self-driving startup, which uses a more end-to-end deep learning approach to the technology, was valued at $200 million in 2017 but has been struggling for a while. https://www.theinformation.com/ ... Alex Heath / @alexeheath : Apple buys a company every two or three weeks, per Tim Cook. This is one of them in the autonomous vehicle space. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Drive.ai has been on the block since March, when sources reported the deep-learning-focused autonomy startup was seeking potential buyers after its valuation slid from roughly $200M in 2017. Bloomberg now reports Apple is preparing an acquihire — a talent purchase, not a technology one — for a company that raised only about $77M against that peak mark.
The deal slots into a decade-long pattern: Apple was already consulting carmakers and suppliers about building a self-driving electric car back in 2015, and the Drive.ai team would give it in-house autonomy engineering it had lacked. Weeks later, Apple confirmed it had hired dozens of Drive.ai engineers and taken over its autonomous cars.
First-order effects
- Drive.ai's more than 100 engineers move to Apple, and per sources Apple takes over the startup's autonomous vehicles — while the ~$77M raised by investors is effectively marked down to whatever Apple paid for the team.
- Drive.ai exits as an independent player in the crowded autonomy field, removing one of the few startups betting on an end-to-end deep learning approach.
Second-order effects
- Other well-funded but stalled AV startups face a repricing: if a $200M-valued company sells as an acquihire, acquirers gain leverage to buy teams at a fraction of prior rounds rather than license or partner.
- Rivals like Waymo and Cruise lose a potential hiring pool to Apple, which — per Tim Cook's own framing that Apple buys a company every two to three weeks — treats small acquisitions as routine talent supply.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, autonomy consolidates into big-tech labs via distressed talent deals rather than standalone companies, and the capital that once backed independent AV startups migrates toward acquirers' internal programs — a path Apple itself followed, with reports of an accelerated fully autonomous car effort arriving by late 2021.
- For Apple specifically, the acquihire becomes a building block in a project that resurfaces repeatedly: sources later describe an autonomous electric vehicle targeted within five to seven years, staffed increasingly by ex-Tesla executives.
The trend: Self-driving startups that outran their funding are being absorbed as acquihires by big-tech car programs, converting failed venture bets into in-house autonomy teams.