Participants and startups in the emerging self-driving vehicles industry (components, systems, trucks, cars and buses) have been at it for over almost 60 years. The pace accelerated in 2004, 2005 and 2007 when DARPA sponsored long-distance competitions for driverless cars, and then again in 2009 when Uber began its ride-hailing system. As the prospects that self-driving ride-hailing fleets, vehicles, systems and associated AI would soon be a reality, startups, fundings, mergers and acquisitions have followed reaching a peak in 2017. Thus far in 2017 more than 55 companies and startups offering everything from solid state distancing sensors to ride-share fleets and mapping systems – plus five strategic acquisitions – raised over $28.2 billion! Listed below are month-by-month recaps of self-driving-related fundings and acquisitions as reported by The Robot Report.

Associate professor Tarek Taha will use the three-year, $44,000 award from the National Science Foundation to work toward his goal of developing an artificial intelligence chip. Taha says the chip will be more efficient and compact than current ones.

In Intel's financial third quarter reported Thursday, the chip giant made $16.1 billion in revenue on earnings of 94 cents per share, beating Wall Street estimates of $15.73 billion in revenue on earnings of 80 cents per share. The PC market continues to be a challenge for Intel. Growth in the company's PC unit was flat over the previous year with $8.9 billion in sales for the quarter. In addition to a slowing market, Intel faces a more competitive Advanced Micro Devices, which just launched its latest chips for laptop computers on Thursday. "We have earnings growth in a market with increasing competition," pointed out Intel CFO Bob Swan in an interview.

US auto retailer AutoNation Inc announced a multi-year partnership on Thursday to support Alphabet Inc's Waymo self-driving car unit, including vehicle maintenance and repairs as the company adds new brands into its fleet, sending its shares up 13 percent to a high for the year. That news was accompanied by a better-than expected third-quarter profit as AutoNation performed well despite the impact of hurricanes during the quarter. There is fierce competition between large automakers to bring self-driving cars to market first. Lauderdale, Florida-based AutoNation is the latest in a series of recent partnerships the self-driving unit has formed. Google has revealed the self driving minivans it hopes could revolutionize the way we travel.

Mapbox, a Washington, DC and San Francisco provider of nav systems for car companies and others involved in autonomous vehicles, raised $164 million in a Series C round led by the SoftBank Vision Fund, with participation from existing investors including Foundry Group, DFJ Growth, DBL Partners, and Thrive Capital. "Location data is central and mission critical to the development of the world's most exciting technologies," said Rajeev Misra, who helps oversee SoftBank's Vision Fund. Element AI, a Canadian startup providing learning platform solutions for self-driving and advanced manufacturing, raised $135 CAD million (around $105 million) in a Series A round (in June) led by Data Collective, a SV-based venture capital firm, and included participation by Fidelity Investments Canada, National Bank of Canada, Intel Capital, and Real Ventures. Ninebot, the Chinese consumer products company that bought out Segway and raised $80 million in 2015, raised another $100 million in a Series C round from the SDIC Fund Management Co. and the China Mobile Fund. Horizon Robotics, another Chinese startup, raised $100 million in a Series A round led by Intel Capital with participation by Wu Capital, Morningside Venture Capital, Linear Venture, Hillhouse Capital and Harvest Investments.

Research analysts are the most likely employees on Wall Street to find themselves working with--or being replaced by--robots, according to a survey by Greenwich Associates. By next year, some 75% of banks and financial firms will either explore or implement artificial intelligence technologies, harnessing a variety of digital services to extract insights from mountains of data. While AI is probably near the peak of its hype cycle, several factors have helped it gain traction in recent years, according to Greenwich. Billions of images and documents are now available online for training computers to spot patterns and other high-level tasks. Advances in graphical processing units, which are adept at the kind of data crunching required by AI, are making sifting through daunting datasets much easier.

ASX-listed artificial intelligence startup Brainchip Holdings has completed a capital raise of $21.5 million, with plans to invest the money into further developing machine learning video analytics technology. Brainchip, a developer of AI and machine learning software and hardware solutions, has reportedly developed its own spiking neural network, which the company describes as a "neuromorphic computing which simulates the functionality of the human brain". The technology powers Brainchip's flagship product, Brainchip Studio, a tool designed to analyse video footage and recognise patterns or faces. The software is intended for use in law enforcement and intelligence organisations. Brainchip claims the software includes advanced facial detection, extraction and classification algorithms and can run on low resolution feeds, requiring only a 24x24 pixel image to detect a face.

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics logged a record profit of 11.2trn won – $10bn (£7.6bn) – in the July to September period, it said on Tuesday, its best for any quarter. The world's biggest memory chip and smartphone maker had its de facto leader jailed in August for bribery and faced a recall of its flagship Galaxy Note 7 device. But its net profits soared 148% on the same period a year ago, it said in a statement, thanks to strong demand for its memory chips and a recovery in smartphone sales with the roll-out of the new generation Galaxy Note 8. The figures come only two weeks after chief executive Kwon Oh-Hyun resigned, saying the South's biggest firm was facing an "unprecedented crisis" and its current profitability was "merely a fruit of decisions and investment made in the past". The firm described Tuesday's numbers as an "overall robust performance".

SAN, FRANCISCO/SEOUL – As of early fall, it was clearer than ever that production problems meant Apple Inc. wouldn't have enough iPhone Xs in time for the holidays. The challenge was how to make the sophisticated phone -- with advanced features such as facial recognition -- in large enough numbers. As Wall Street analysts and fan blogs watched for signs that the company would stumble, Apple came up with a solution: It quietly told suppliers they could reduce the accuracy of the face-recognition technology to make it easier to manufacture, according to people familiar with the situation. With the iPhone X set to debut on Nov. 3, we're about to find out whether the move has paid off. Some analysts say there may still be too few iPhone Xs to meet initial demand.

Investors and analysts have been expecting Ant to go public sometime in 2018. The Hangzhou-based company last raised $4.5 billion from private investors in April 2016 in a deal that gave it a $60 billion valuation--and its business has since expanded significantly. An IPO "is not a necessity or a priority" right now, said Douglas Feagin, Ant's president of international business, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong. Mr. Feagin, an American who was a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. investment banker for more than two decades, said he can appreciate the benefits of going public but Ant has other, more pressing, plans to implement. Among Ant's pursuits: expanding Alipay's global footprint within and beyond the 70 countries the payments system is used in, while plumbing for new technology investments globally in things like facial-recognition and machine-learning systems.