Autonomous vehicle startup Argo AI is shutting down

Autonomous vehicle company Argo AI is shutting down. In an earnings report, Ford (a major investor in Argo AI) noted that the company is being wound down and that it will hire engineers from the startup to expand and speed up development of Level 2 and Level 3 autonomous driving systems. Ford says that it made a decision to refocus its self-driving capital spending from the Level 4 systems Argo was working on (where the vehicles handles most driving operations) to Level 2 (advanced driver assistance) and Level 3 (conditional automation) tech it's developing in-house. It noted that Argo AI wasn't able to attract new investors and that it was taking a "$2.7 billion non-cash, pretax impairment on its investment" in the company, which led to it posting an $827 million net loss for Q3. According to TechCrunch, which first reported on Argo AI's closure, Volkswagen and Ford will snap up the company's tech and other assets.