Intel

Money keeps pouring in from companies trying to perfect the self-driving car. Like, a ton of money. 3 billion . Mobileye's systems , which are used by 27 carmakers, depend on specialized cameras to sense a car's surroundings on the road. It's the tech behind the emergency braking and lane assistance systems that are becoming more common in new vehicles. The acquisition shouldn't come as a huge surprise, since the two companies have been working together with BMW since last year to create a fully autonomous car by 2021. The first test vehicles for that project, iNext, are slated to hit the streets as part of a pilot program in the second half of this year .

Intel's big acquisition shows that it won't be content simply providing chips for self-driving systems. 3 billion is a massive investment, Intel believes the self-driving vehicle market could climb to $70 billion by 2030 Intel CEO Brian Krzanich made the company's intentions clear when announcing the acquisition. He touted the potential of combining Intel's processing power and Mobileye's advanced automotive computer vision systems, as well as its ties to automakers. "Together, we can accelerate the future of autonomous driving with improved performance in a cloud-to-car solution at a lower cost for automakers,” he said in a statement .

The real value here is that the systems developed by the Intel-Mobileye partnership won't be tied to just one automaker or use case, like other projects in the works from automakers like Tesla or ride-hailing companies like Uber. Instead, Intel will look to reap the benefits of being a free agent, so more deals like the BMW partnership could be on the way. Mobileye famously teamed up with Tesla and helped to create the automaker's first automatic crash avoidance system. The two companies went through an ugly breakup in 2016, however, following the first self-driving car fatality, which was the result of a driver's improper use of the Autopilot system.

” The Intel-Mobileye deal is part of a larger trend in the development of autonomous driving systems than can be marketed to multiple customers, rather than each automaker building its own. In January, the former Google self-driving car project, Waymo, announced it started building its own hardware to go along with the software it's developing. For now, the Waymo platform is being honed on a fleet of Chrysler Pacifica minivans -- but the company has not-so-subtly hinted that other automakers are in its sights for the future.