Tech giant Amazon.com Inc has confirmed its acquisition of 6-year-old Foster city Startup Zoox for over $1 Billion last Friday, to venture in self-driving technology.
Amazon will be able to control nearly 1,000-person startups associated with developing self-driving electric vehicles With this deal. Rumors for Amazon’s acquisition to takeover Zoox came under the spotlight last month when the two companies were in close talk to complete the takeover in less than $3.8 billion, as of the value for Zoox in July 2018.
Zoox has been advancing a bi-directional automobile with symmetrical front and back end for steering wheel free convenient travel in either direction. However, it’s still under suspense what would be Amazon’s strategy with Zoox’s technology, Amazon might integrate Zoox’s offerings to develop a cheaper and faster logistic network.
“Zoox is functioning to imagine, invent, and derive a world-class autonomous ride-hailing experience”, stated Amazon CEO of Worldwide Consumer Jeff Wilke during a company blog last Friday. “Zoox shared the similar principle to Amazon of being oriented towards innovation and its customers, and supporting the talented Zoox team to turn their vision into reality in recent future would be exciting for us.”
Despite its successful fund-raising, Zoox was not ready to cope up with the economic climate alteration caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The company confirmed laying off 120 employees in April. In the meantime, if the company remains on track for passenger ride-hailing, it will foster Amazon to give a head-to-head with Lyft and Uber in the field of autonomous driving technology.
“The automotive driving industry will be greatly impacted by the takeover of Zoox by Amazon. We have made great strides without a purpose-built approach to safe, autonomous mobility, and our exceptionally talented team working each day to understand the vision. We now have an even greater opportunity to understand an autonomous future”, added Zoox CEO, Aicha Evans.
If succeeded, it will remain Amazon’s biggest investment in self-driving technology to date. Amazon announced Zoox to operate as a standalone business with CEO Aicha Evans and CTO cum co-founder Jessie Levinson in pursuit.
