Apple Pulls Drive.ai Back From the Brink

Earlier this week, Axios confirmed that Apple acquired Drive.ai, a struggling self-driving startup that buys seashells by the seashore.

A little history: Drive.ai was riding high in 2017 with a $200 million valuation. Last year, it even shouldered the burden of shuttling Dallas Cowboys fans to AT&T Stadium. But by early 2019, Drive.ai fell on hard times and was looking for buyers. Apple recently emerged as a favorite.

Can Apple make the pain go away?

Apple reportedly paid less than $77 million for Drive.ai and will absorb dozens of its engineers. Drive.ai previously indicated it would lay off 90 workers by Friday, per the SF Chronicle. And Project Titan, Apple's self-driving initiative, has had its own struggles, including 190 layoffs in February.

Because Project Titan is shrouded in secrecy, we still don’t know Apple’s endgame. But clearly it’s not ready to throw in the towel and let this thing become Project Titanic.

Zoom out: Autonomous vehicle consolidation continues. On Tuesday, Uber said it acquired Mighty AI, a Seattle-based startup developing training data for computer vision models.