In 2015, then Uber CEO Travis Kalanick pulled off a bold talent raid when he poached some 40 roboticists from the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon. The move reportedly left the world-class engineering university reeling, and it seemed to signal that the world's hottest startup was on the cusp of making self-driving cars a reality. Now, that self-driving unit is no more, and the estimated timeline for robotaxi domination has extended well into this decade. Uber said Monday it would sell off the self-driving unit that was the result of that raid, the Pittsburgh-based Advanced Technologies Group. The 1,200-person unit will be acquired by the self-driving-tech developer Aurora.

Participants and startups in the emerging self-driving vehicles industry (components, systems, trucks, cars and buses) have been at it for over almost 60 years. The pace accelerated in 2004, 2005 and 2007 when DARPA sponsored long-distance competitions for driverless cars, and then again in 2009 when Uber began its ride-hailing system. As the prospects that self-driving ride-hailing fleets, vehicles, systems and associated AI would soon be a reality, startups, fundings, mergers and acquisitions have followed reaching a peak in 2017. Thus far in 2017 more than 55 companies and startups offering everything from solid state distancing sensors to ride-share fleets and mapping systems – plus five strategic acquisitions – raised over $28.2 billion! Listed below are month-by-month recaps of self-driving-related fundings and acquisitions as reported by The Robot Report.

When Anthony Levandowski loped onto the stage to accept the Hot New Startup award at an industry awards show this month, the trucker hat perched on his head served as a cringeworthy nod to the millions of drivers his self-driving truck company is poised to leave jobless. Three weeks later, it is the pioneering engineer of self-driving car technology whose job could be in jeopardy, and the lawsuit he is named in could pose an existential threat to an increasingly vulnerable Uber. With deep pockets and a $70bn valuation, Uber has racked up a series of victories against regulators, taxi companies, and upstart competitors. But Uber will now go up against tech's undisputed heavyweight champion – Google – while it is still on the ropes after a consumer boycott campaign and allegations of a toxic work environment. A report by the New York Times that Uber misled the public by blaming a human driver for running a red light during the company's short-lived self-driving trial in San Francisco further damaged both Uber's and Levandowski's credibility.

Autonomous driving will be the star of the show at the new labs, but Uber is promising that its AI work will shape a lot of its day-to-day business. It could improve the accuracy of predicted arrival times for your rides and UberEats deliveries, tackle fraud and improve the chances of UberPool matching your car with other travelers. Ideally, you'll notice the difference well before you set foot in a driverless Uber car. This is also a preemptive strike against the competition. The company tells the NYT that there's a fierce battle for AI talent -- acquiring Geometric Intelligence prevents Uber from losing out to Lyft, Google and others hoping to put machine learning to work on the road. It's playing the long game, in other words -- this is less about immediate gains and more about securing Uber's future.

If Uber is going to make its dreams of self-driving ridesharing cars a reality, it's going to need a lot of expertise in artificial intelligence... and it's taking big steps to make that happen. The company has created Uber AI Labs to fuel its research, and it's getting the team started by acquiring AI startup Geometric Intelligence. It's a small 15-person outfit, but the newly purchased company stands out by resisting the urge to train AI by feeding it large data sets. As the New York Times notes, Geometric Intelligence prefers to have systems create their own rules from just a handful of examples -- while Uber ride data will help, the AI won't need a wealth of knowledge to make informed decisions. Autonomous driving will be the star of the show at the new labs, but Uber is promising that its AI work will shape a lot of its day-to-day business. It could improve the accuracy of predicted arrival times for your rides and UberEats deliveries, tackle fraud and improve the chances of UberPool matching your car with other travelers.