Mobileye made its name, and its money, by equipping cars with millions of computer vision chips designed to support automotive safety features and advanced driver assistance systems. Intel’s subsidiaries and publicly traded companies are then expanding to address autonomous driving through chips and software.
Now, co-founder and president Amnon Shashua is taking the company into what he calls Mobileye 3.0. And that means a lot of robotics and acquisitions.
The Israeli company announced Tuesday during CES in Las Vegas that it has reached a deal to acquire Mentee Robotics – a startup co-founded by Shashua in 2022 – for $ 900 million. Under the agreement, Mobileye will purchase Mentee Robotics for $612 million in cash and up to 26.2 million shares of common stock. Shashua, who is the chairman, co-founder and significant shareholder of Mentee, resigned from the consideration and approval of Mobileye’s board, according to the company.
The transaction, which was approved by the board of Mobileye and Intel, its largest shareholder, is expected to close in the first quarter. The transaction is expected to increase Mobileye’s operating expenses in 2026 by a low single-digit percentage.
“Today marks a new chapter for automotive robotics and AI, and the start of Mobileye 3.0,” Shashua said Tuesday. “By combining Mentee’s breakthroughs in humanoid robotics with Mobileye’s expertise in automotive autonomy, and its proven ability to produce advanced AI, we have a unique opportunity to lead the evolution of physical AI in robotics and autonomous vehicles on a global scale.”
Mentee Robotics, which develops humanoid robots, will continue as an independent unit within Mobileye. Of course, with Shashua as the brains and shareholder between the two companies, there will be a lot of overlap.
The benefits for Mobileye are unclear unless everyone seems to be jumping into the humanoid robot game these days. Officially, Mobileye said that the acquisition “enlarges the scope of the business with a decisive step towards Physical Artificial Intelligence in general.” Specifically, systems designed to understand context and intent also interact naturally with humans and the physical world.
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In other words, Mobileye, and Shashua, seem to want to go beyond the technology used to allow vehicles to navigate the world and also apply it to humanoid robots. The company suggested in the announcement that it has the funds to get there, noting that the current automotive revenue pipeline – powered by advanced vehicle autonomy and advanced driver assistance technology – is $24.5 billion over the next eight years. The company said that the pipeline figure increased by more than 40% compared to January 2023.
Of course, the development of a humanoid robot that could eventually go into production would be a costly enterprise. Mentees benefit from being able to use Mobileye’s resources, including its state-of-the-art AI training infrastructure – aka computing.
The acquisition news comes a day after Mobileye announced another customer win for its next-generation chip built for advanced driver assistance systems. The company announced Monday that “top 10 automakers” have struck a deal to buy 9 million EyeQ6H-based Surround ADAS systems. Volkswagen Group announced in March that it will also use the chip. Mobileye currently estimates delivery of more than 19 million EyeQ6H-based Surround systems.