Intel confirmed all rumors today about its acquisition of Moovit, the Israeli urban mobility startup, with a deal worth approximately $ 900 million.
Reports about the impending takeover have been published for the first time from the local Israeli newspaper Calcalist Sunday, and now on a press release Today, Intel confirmed its pending acquisition of Moovit with the aim of making its Mobileye project a “comprehensive mobility provider,” including robotaxi services.
Climbing autonomous vehicles
Chip giant Intel already has experience acquiring Israeli startups. Mobileye is a project born from the acquisition of the startup of the same name for 15,3 billion dollars in 2018. Mobileye was a computer vision company specialized in autonomous vehicles. And a few months ago, Intel paid another $2 billion for Habana Labs, which develops artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions. This latest acquisition is perhaps particularly noteworthy, given that Intel had previously invested in Moovit through Intel Capital, its venture capital arm.
Let's talk a second at Moovit
Founded in 2012, Moovit is best known for its app used by 500 million people to navigate a city using a combination of transportation options that includes augmented reality (AR) directions. The company has focused its core business on licensing its platform through a “mobility as a service” offering. In practice, Moovit provides entities with data and analytics to improve urban transportation infrastructure, while it offers companies like TomTom and Microsoft real-time transportation data to include in their apps.
The timing of Intel's acquisition is notable, as it comes during a time of great uncertainty for companies like Moovit. The global pandemic has greatly reduced transportation as people stayed at home. Moovit itself published data showing the impact of Covid-19 on transport use in major cities around the world, showing that in some areas it has decreased by 80%.
