Tesla Acquires Deepscale, Accelerates Towards Road-Ready Robotaxis

After 11 autopilot engineers left Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) in May amid department restructuring, Tesla found itself in need of new software talent. On October 1, Tesla announced its acquisition of Deepscale, a Silicon Valley, California-based startup that will help actualize Tesla CEO Elon Musk's desire for its vehicles to become self-driving robotaxis. On LinkedIn, Deepscale's CEO Forrest Iandola announced his new role as a senior staff machine learning scientist at Tesla. CNBC reported that Tesla bought Deepscale "outright," but no financial details have surfaced. Deepscale is Tesla's sixth acquisition, including Maxwell Technologies in May 2019.