Amazon's Zoox Acquisition– Is LiDAR Next?

Amazon's recent offer to acquire Zoox places them squarely in the Autonomous Vehicle (AV) space, competing with the likes of Waymo, Tesla and others for movement automation of people and goods. As a reminder, Zoox is the San Francisco, California based company with a breathtakingly bold vision – to develop purpose-made autonomous electric vehicles for ride-hailing, and deliver services to consumers through this platform. Executing this vision means competing on multiple fronts with big players- automotive OEMs (designing and building cars), tech companies like Google (who has spent a decade and a fortune to develop the Autonomous Vehicle Driving System or AVS), and ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft LYFT. To date, Zoox has raised $1B and hired close to 1000 people, but without any revenues, they probably need 10X the investment. A recent article covers the details of the Zoox acquisition, and posits that an important driver was Zoox's expertise in computer vision.