Ford just made a $1 billion investment in a self-driving AI company no one has heard of

Ford just announced a massive $1 billion investment in a startup that hadn't even gone public before today. It's one of the auto industry's single largest investments in self-driving tech and sounds like a desperate move to stay relevant in the self-driving race with Waymo, Tesla and others -- until you find out the company, Argo AI, is led by two self-driving tech industry vets who held leadership positions on the autonomous development teams at Google and Uber before striking out on their own. This follows Ford's pledge to put fully autonomous cars on roads by 2021 and rebrand as a "mobility company." Ford's Autonomous Vehicle Development program recently unveiled a new version of its self-driving Fusion design, but this new investment will shift focus to the development of a virtual driver system, which serves as the "brains" that control autonomous vehicles. SEE ALSO: Google's Waymo self-driving platform shows big improvements The announcement came late this afternoon, via a Medium post authored by Ford President and CEO Mark Fields.