Intel to Acquire MobilEye for $15.3 Billion

13 March, 2017

Intel’s Automated Driving Group, will be headquartered in Israel and led by Prof. Amnon Shashua, Mobileye’s Chairman and CTO. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich: "Autonomous car produce four terabytes of data per day"

*[Photograph above: Prof. Amnon Shashua of Mobileye]

Intel Corporation an Mobileye N.V. (NYSE: MBLY) today announced a definitive agreement under which Intel would acquire Mobileye. Pursuant to the agreement, a subsidiary of Intel will commence a tender offer to acquire all of the issued and outstanding ordinary shares of Mobileye for $63.54 per share in cash, representing an equity value of approximately $15.3 billion and an enterprise value of $14.7 billion.

The combination is expected to position Intel as a leading technology provider in the fast-growing market for autonomous vehicles. Intel estimates the vehicle systems, data and services market opportunity to be up to $70 billion by 2030.

Intel’s Automated Driving Group will be based in Jeruzalem

Together with partners and customers, Intel and Mobileye expect to deliver driving solutions that will transform the automotive industry. The combined global autonomous driving organization, which will consist of Mobileye and Intel’s Automated Driving Group, will be headquartered in Israel and led by Prof. Amnon Shashua, Mobileye’s CoFounder, Chairman and CTO.

The organization will support both companies’ existing production programs and build upon relationships with automotive OEMs, Tier-1 suppliers and semiconductor partners to develop advanced driving assist, highly autonomous and fully autonomous driving programs.

4,000GB per Car per Day

“This acquisition is a great step forward,” said Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO. “Intel provides critical foundational technologies for autonomous driving. Mobileye brings the industry’s best automotive-grade computer vision and strong momentum with automakers and suppliers. Together, we can accelerate the future of autonomous driving with improved performance at a lower cost.”

As cars progress from assisted driving to fully autonomous, they are increasingly becoming data centers on wheels. Intel expects that by 2020, autonomous vehicles will generate 4,000GB of data per day, which plays to Intel’s strengths in high-performance computing and network connectivity. The complexity and computing power of highly and fully autonomous cars creates large-scale opportunities for high-end Intel Xeon processors and high-performance EyeQ4 and EyeQ5 SoCs, high-performance FPGAs, memory, high-bandwidth connectivity, and computer vision technology.

The transaction is expected to close within the next nine months. It has been approved by the Intel and Mobileye Boards of Directors and is subject to the receipt of certain regulatory approvals and other closing conditions.

In a mail to the employees, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich explained the motivations behind the deal: “Many of you have asked why we think autonomous cars and vehicles are so important to Intel’s future. The answer is DATA. Our strategy is to make Intel the driving force of the data revolution across every technology and every industry. We are a DATA company. The businesses we focus on, and deliver solutions to, create, use and analyze massive amounts of data.”

“I recently had a chance to speak at the LA Auto show and the title of my presentation was “Data is the New Oil.” My message was simple: automobiles and the automotive industry are increasingly driven by data and computing. The saying “What’s under the hood” will increasingly refer to computing, not horsepower. At four terabytes of data per day, the average autonomous car will put out the data equivalent of approximately 3,000 people.

“Put just one million autonomous vehicles on the road and you have the data equivalent of half the world’s population. This massive amount of data requires all of Intel’s assets to provide the cost-effective highperformance solutions our customers need.”

Share via Whatsapp

Posted in: Autonomous Car , Semiconductors