Ford Invests $1 Billion in Robotics Startup Argo to Help Bring a Driverless Car to Market by 2021

Ford Motor is spending $1 billion to take over a robotics startup to acquire more of the expertise needed to reach its ambitious goal of having a fully driverless vehicle on the road by 2021. The big bet announced Friday comes just a few months after the Pittsburgh startup, Argo AI, was created by two alumni of Carnegie Mellon University's robotics program, Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander. Salesky formerly worked on self-driving cars at a high-profile project within Google -- now known as Waymo -- and Rander did the same kind of engineering at ride-hailing service Uber before the two men teamed up to launch Argo late last year. Argo had been considering whether to raise money from venture capitalists, the conventional fundraising channel for startups, before opting to become an independent subsidiary of Ford instead. Ford is spreading its $1 billion investment over a five-year period.