June 2020: Volkswagen will invest USD 2.6 billion in capital and assets in Ford's self-driving unit ... [ ] Argo AI to market new-technology vehicles in the United States and Europe. Argo.ai, an autonomous vehicle (AV) unicorn, announced on October 26, 2022, that it would terminate operations across its locations in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, New Jersey and Munich. It impacts roughly 2100 employees and, more importantly, puts into focus the feasibility and business model for autonomous transportation on public roads. The company was founded in 2013 by alums of the 2006 DARPA Grand Challenge, Google, and Uber AV initiatives and secured significant backing and funding from Ford in 2017 ($1B) and later from Volkswagen in 2020 ($2.5B). Both investments occurred under the auspices of earlier CEOs, who have since been replaced (Ford CEO Jim Hacket in 2020 and Volkswagen CEO Herbert Deiss in 2022). It is unsurprising that new management saw things differently and did not want to inherit their predecessor's strategic bets.

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.