Intel buys Moovit app for $900 mn, boosting its effort to build self-driving cars

Intel is acquiring Moovit, a transportation-planning service company for $900 million. This will help Intel in its effort to build self-driving cars.

Moovit is an eight years old company based out of Isreal. The company makes an app that compiles data from public transit systems, ride-hailing services and other resources to help its 800 million users plan the best ways to get around. Intel is planning to combine both Moovit and Mobileye. The latter is a self-driving car specialist that Intel bought for about $15 billion in 2017.

Intel is upping its ante on self-driving cars at a time when many other companies are bracing for an extended economic downturn that already has thrust more than 30 million people into the unemployment lines.

In 2018, Intel has already acquired a stake in Moovit when it was among a group of investors who injected $50 million into the startup. Till date Moovit had raised more than $130 million from venture capitalists and other investors.

After Intel invested in Moovit, Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua joined the startup's board of directors as an observer. Shashau will now oversee Moovit's roughly 200 employees including its co-founder and CEO Nir Erez, who will become an executive vice president within the Mobileye group.