This Is How Toyota Plans to Spend $100 Million on AI

Toyota plans to spend a lot of money on cutting-edge technology in the near future. The auto giant debuted Tuesday a $100 million venture capital unit, Toyota AI Ventures, that will invest in startups specializing in artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles, robotics, data analytics, and cloud computing technology. The VC arm will be a subsidiary of Toyota Research Institute, the auto giant's research center that opened in September 2015 and is led by former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program manager Gill Pratt. Get Data Sheet, Fortune's technology newsletter. At the time, Toyota said it would spend $50 million over a five-year period to help the center, which involves both Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, research ways to use AI to create self-driving automobiles.