Ford is investing $1 billion in self-driving tech startup Argo AI

Ford is investing $1bn (£801m) over the next five years in tech startup Argo AI to help the Detroit company achieve its goal to deliver a fully autonomous vehicle by 2021, the companies announced on Friday. Pittsburgh-based Argo AI was founded last year by Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander who previously worked at Google and Uber respectively on the companies' self-driving vehicle initiatives. "We've made significant progress and are on track to achieve our goal," Ford president and CEO Mark Fields wrote in a Medium post. "At the same time, we know rapidly evolving technologies and fierce competition require us to remain flexible and open to new ways of strengthening our team." In August last year, Ford announced plans to sell fully autonomous self-driving cars, without steering wheels, for urban ride-sharing fleets by 2021.