Ford Is Investing $1 Billion In An AI Startup To Make Self-Driving Cars

Ford is going all in on self-driving tech. The automaker said today it plans to invest $1 billion over the next five years in Argo AI, an artificial intelligence company founded by former Google and Uber employees to develop autonomous driving technology. "We think automation is going to define the automobile in the next decade, and autonomous vehicles will have as significant an impact on society as Ford's moving assembly line did 100 years ago," Mark Fields, Ford's president and chief executive, said at a press event in San Francisco announcing the partnership. Argo AI will work exclusively with Ford on building a virtual driver system, with the goal of Ford delivering an autonomous vehicle in 2021. While everything Argo AI works on during that time will be made available exclusively to Ford, over time there's the potential for Argo AI to also license that technology to other automakers.