At the announcement of Amazon’s takeover of Zoox, Elon Musk – the boss of Tesla and SpaceX – responded by calling Jeff Bezos – the boss of Amazon and Blue Origin – a … copy. With this Californian company, Amazon gets its hands on a specialist in autonomous driving technologies.
” We acquire Zoox to help them realize their vision of autonomous driving “, Amazon said without disclosing the transaction price (subject to the approval of the relevant authorities). Financial Times, it would be over $ 1.2 billion.
Even if the group is relatively discreet about this, it is not the first time that autonomous driving technologies have aroused its interest, but an acquisition in this area marks indeed a first.
The goal sought by Amazon remains unclear. Jeff Bezos’ group is working on an autonomous delivery solution for the last kilometer with its autonomous robot Scout and has invested in the start-up Aurora for autonomous driving technologies. Amazon is also a shareholder of Rivian often compared to a competitor of Tesla.
Zoox works on autonomous electric taxis and claims a design ” from zero “rather than an adaptation to existing models for its technological solution.
Tesla had filed a lawsuit against Zoox and employees who left Tesla to join Zoox. Four of them had taken confidential documents from Tesla. The dispute was finally settled amicably and with the payment of an undisclosed amount for Tesla. This probably explains the taunts of Elon Musk.
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